The Hound
by pantiara
Summary: "I break them. I push them to the brink of insanity, and then I pull them back. He will break eventually, too, my dear. " - 1 year after Apocalypse, Jean leaves for college, Peter is arrested, and they both disappear into thin air. Missing, dead... or has something even more sinister happened? Can Raven keep the rest of the team... and herself... together in order to save them?
1. Part 1 - Regret

Without warning, Raven came to be.

She sat in a white room. Not so much white as the utter absence of color or shadow. In fact, she didn't think it was a room at all. It was an overwhelming expanse of nothing, a desert of space without beginning or end.

She looked around her and absentmindedly touched her collarbone. She wasn't wearing the blue, textured skin and red hair she was born with, but the smooth white skin and blonde hair she liked to disguise herself in with her mutant powers. Her dress was white as well. It was sleeveless, satin, and came down to her bare ankles, with a chunky silver belt hooked loosely around her waist.

She sat, covered and surrounded by unnatural white, and for some reason was not concerned. She remembered this place. She'd been here before, but when, and why, and how many times?

Her calm shattered when she heard a sound from across the impossible desert.

A newborn's cry. _Her_ newborn.

She rushed towards the sound that echoed from everywhere and nowhere, but she knew exactly where it was. She came to a white bassinet with a sheer lace canopy. From it cried her baby, wailing pitifully.

She picked him up, feeling his weight wiggle in her arms, and a crushing pain squeezed her heart. It was her child, but at the same time it couldn't be. She'd given him up years ago. He'd be a young man by now. She knew her baby's face was there... it had to be there... but as familiar as it was to her she couldn't force herself to see it.

It cried still, like a tiny mewling ghost.

She tried to keep her voice from breaking as she cooed, "It's okay... it's okay... Mommy's right here."

Raven changed, transforming into her natural cobalt blue skin. The precious specter stopped crying and settled into contented gurgles.

She suddenly felt a presence behind her. Two strong hands tenderly grasped her shoulders, pulling her backwards against a firm chest. Something as strong and flexible as a boa constrictor... a tail... coiled slowly around her leg.

"Hello, _lisichka,_ " whispered Azazel into her ear, sending a longing chill up her spine.

She turned around to face Azazel, her former lover, the father of her child, as whole and lifelike as if he hadn't died two decades ago. Yet, unlike her baby, he was not a faceless ghost to her. She remembered every detail of him; piercing eyes of robin's egg blue, crimson red skin, thick black hair slicked back to show his widow's peak, the scar across his left eye.

She regretted never asking him how he got that scar. She'd never get to know the truth.

With that thought, she realized that she'd had this same dream over and over, feeling the joy and pain of seeing all that she'd left behind, of those who'd left her behind, and waking to bury the dead and bottle her emotions all over again.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

Azazel looked sadly at the bundle in her arms. "I'm sorry, _dragaya,_ but I must take him."

"Take him where?"

She looked down at her child, but he was gone. She held only the blanket he'd been wrapped in.

When she looked back up, there stood her grown son next to his father.

Kurt Wagner. The name his adoptive mother had given him.

He was a small, lanky young man of nearly 21. Even though his father dwarfed him in size and his skin was dark indigo blue instead of red, they shared an obvious resemblance. Even the spades of their tails were shaped the same.

His face was much too familiar for even her stubborn subconscious to filter out. He glared at her with red-yellow eyes and furrowed tattooed brow, as if her own dream was angry for her conscious intrusion. His tail lashed angrily behind him and he bared his razor sharp teeth in a growl.

Raven decided to take charge of the situation.

"Kurt," she said, addressing her son authoritatively, "you're not going anywhere."

"I'm truly sorry," said Azazel, ignoring her, and he placed a hand on Kurt's shoulder.

Dread seized the back of her neck. She didn't know what she had to save him from, but she knew with the certainty of nightmares that if she didn't, she would never see him again.

She ran towards them, but her legs felt agonizingly slow, like they were churning through wet cement. Azazel teleported Kurt with a puff of smoke.

Instead of disappearing to another location like they would have in real life, Azazel and Kurt appeared in another plane of existence that opened up directly behind them; another dimension exactly like the one they were in before. They teleported again and again, opening another dimension each time and leaving an expanding hallway of mirrored universes in front of them.

Raven reached out to them hopelessly. She struggled to make her legs move faster, screaming as Azazel and Kurt teleported exponentially farther from her reach.

The scream, however, was not her own.

* * *

 _Author's note: I will try to update every Friday, or at least every weekend. Also check out my tumblr (pantiaraevokovitch, blog is called Ventilator Literature). The story will be there, too, plus poems and things, plus if I ever get any followers there I might start doing those reader x character fics I've seen... tumblr is new territory for me so I'm sorry if I sound like an old woman._ _Thanks for reading!_


	2. Part 2 - Good News

Raven was ripped from her nightmare by the sound of Jean screaming.

She jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway, not bothering to dress. A young African woman with a white mohawk, Ororo, poked her head out of her room at all the commotion to see Raven completely naked, which by this point many of the students of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters were used to. She rushed to follow Raven down the hall to Jean's room, her thin, silk robe fluttering behind her.

Raven flung open the door expecting the worst; blood, fire, a rapist, swarms of spiders. Instead Jean stood in the middle of her room in her nightgown with a huge grin on her face, her long, red hair bouncing excitedly, green eyes wide with excitement, holding a letter in her hand.

Before Raven could utter a syllable, Kurt appeared in a puff of smoke with Scott beside him, both still in their pajamas. Raven backed away a bit and subtly morphed into a form that looked clothed. She was fiercely proud of her body, but it felt more than wrong being naked in front of Kurt.

Scott rushed to his girlfriend's side just as Ororo caught up with the other X-Men.

"Jean!" he exclaimed. Even though his expression was hidden behind dark ruby quartz glasses, his voice radiated concern.

He held her gently by her elbows. "What happened? We could hear you all the way in the boy's corridor."

Still smiling, Jean held up the letter for everyone to see. It was made of thick, expensive parchment paper and marked with an official looking stamp; an emblem of a redwood tree.

"I got into Stanford!" she squealed.

Raven breathed a sigh of relief. Ororo and Kurt surrounded their friend with ecstatic congratulations.

"I am so excited for you, Jean!" said Ororo in her thick Egyptian accent.

"That's _wünderbar_!" said Kurt, in his equally heavy German accent.

"Stanford?" said a voice from the other side of the room. It was Peter, whom nobody had noticed run in during all the hubbub. Not impossible, or surprising, since he could run faster than the speed of sound. He obnoxiously snapped his gum and lifted his running goggles onto his shock of messy, silver-white hair. "That's like, in Connecticut, right?"

"California," Scott corrected him, his voice grave. He perked up and tried to smile even though he knew Jean had already telepathically felt his sadness. He brushed her hair away from her face. She wore the sweet, empathetic, slightly embarrassed expression she always did when she accidentally read someone's thoughts.

"I _am_ really proud of you, Jean," said Scott, as if she'd already spoken to him.

"Good job, Ms. Smartypants," said Peter as he continued to chew. He scratched his pale, narrow chin, covered in a fine, white blanket of leftover 5 o'clock shadow. "You get to go have fun in Cali for four years and miss out on the crappy New York winters."

"I love the winter here," said Ororo, slightly offended. "Do you know how hard it is to make it snow in Cairo?"

Peter ignored her completely. "Aw man, dude," he whined, drooping his shoulders and rolling his eyes in an exaggerated mini-tantrum, "I want to go to the West Coast!"

"You could run there in a few hours," said Kurt wryly.

"Yeah, but running full speed for very long makes my legs turn to jelly," he said.

Raven cleared her throat and stepped forward. "I know you're excited, Jean, but the screaming was unnecessary. And misleading, honestly. I was sure you were dying."

"I know, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to give everyone a heart attack." She gasped suddenly and started counting off days on her fingers.

"23rd, 24th, 25th... Oh my god. I have, like, no time to get ready to move!" She began pacing the room, opening drawers and closets, pulling out clothes and travel bags. Scott shifted uncomfortably.

She started talking to herself more than the others, "I have to call my parents, I have to register for classes! I still don't know everything I need to take or if they'll take my AP credits from here..."

"Speaking of heart attacks," said Peter under his breath.

"Jean," said Scott.

"...and if they don't, it's going to be a few thousand more dollars, and then I'll need a private loan..."

"Jean," he said again, more firm this time.

She stopped gathering her things and looked at the bemused, slightly concerned faces of her teammates.

"I have a lot to do," she explained sheepishly.

"Well, that may be true," replied Raven, breaking the awkward silence, "but you're still going to training today."

"But I need to-"

"Some exercise is going to work off all that nervous energy," Raven interrupted her briskly, switching into drill sergeant mode, her favorite way to diffuse uncomfortable situations. She addressed the whole group as she left the room, "We meet in the danger room at 13:00 today, sharp. If you're late, 30 push ups and 10 pull ups, understood?"

The young X-Men responded with a feeble, "Yes, ma'am."

Raven poked her head back in the room for a moment. "Congratulations Jean, by the way," she said, then headed back down the hall.


	3. Part 3 - Abandoned

Scott left Jean's room without a word as their other teammates bombarded her with questions about Stanford. She gave him a concerned glance before he shut the door behind him. He felt horrible, but he'd mustered up as much happiness as he could to let Jean know he loved her. He couldn't dredge up any more without being facetious. It would only make her upset.

That was the challenging thing about dating a telepath. It was like being in love with a very kind, tender, well calibrated lie detector.

After a shower and a shave, he felt slightly less awful. He changed into his favorite old gym shirt and black denim jeans. He went from the boy's corridor down the wraparound staircase, past gaggles of high school kids in the lavish foyer, and into the mansion's garage.

It was cavernous, full of rare, vintage, or just ridiculously expensive cars. It was air conditioned or heated, depending on the season. An enormous dehumidifier chugged away on muggy days, which Scott thought was overkill even for the oldest vehicles in the collection. He had a feeling the Professor only allowed him to touch anything in here because he knew how to repair quite a few of them. Scott had taken the liberty of setting up his own workbench in the corner. He didn't seem to mind.

He wondered why the Professor even had any of these cars, since he was wheelchair bound and couldn't drive the majority of them anyway.

 _Must be a rich person thing,_ he thought, _to keep something expensive you can't use and then buy more of them._

Whatever the reason, he was happy to have the place to himself. It had become his own nearly private den since he started living at the mansion. It was where he came to think, or not think, whatever the case may be.

He told himself he was there to fix the noisy muffler of his favorite classic car, a pale yellow 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket convertible, but he knew better. Nonetheless, he needed a distraction from Jean's imminent departure, badly. He took out his toolbox, jacked up the solid steel behemoth, slid under on an old skateboard, and got to work.

After a few minutes of attempting to remove the exhaust pipe from the muffler, he heard the garage door open and close. He didn't need to look to know who it was.

"Hey, Scott," said Jean. Upside down, he watched her high tops timidly walk towards him. "What are you up to?" she asked.

Scott tried to make his mind as blank as possible while keeping a cheery tone. "Hey Jean," he said, "just working on Old Daisy here." He tapped the Oldsmobile's undercarriage with his wrench. The clang echoed throughout the garage.

"How are you feeling?"

"You already know," he muttered, and regretted it immediately.

Jeans telekinetic power slid the skateboard out from under the car. She had changed into high waisted shorts and a button down blouse that engulfed her slender frame, her hair in a ponytail to show her round, freckled face. He put away his tools and wiped most of the grease from his hands.

"It would make you feel better if we talked about it," she said.

He grumbled something affirmative and went to his workbench. He began fiddling with some loose nuts and bolts, putting the nuts on top of each other and fitting the bolts through the little tower he'd created.

Finally, he spoke. "You're going to be thousands of miles away for four years and I'm going to be here alone." He flicked a tower of nuts, sending a few tinkling onto the floor.

"That didn't make me feel better." He sat on a chair and spun around to face the wall.

"You're not going to be alone. You'll have the X-Men, and the Professor."

"There's nothing they can do to replace you."

Jean sat down next to him and put her head on his shoulder. "I'll come back during the summers, and spring breaks, and Christmas breaks," she said hopefully. "My whole family lives in New York, it's not like I'm just going to disappear forever. In fact, I'm going to move back to the mansion once I earn my Psych degree. Maybe be a school counselor."

Scott chuckled bitterly, "No, you're not."

Jean took her head off his shoulder and looked at him as if he'd insulted her. "Did you become a precog, too?" she asked. "You know what I'm going to do with my life?" 

"No, it's just..." he steeled himself and took a deep breath. "People don't move across the country to a prestigious private school just to come right back home like they never left.

"I might not be a telepath, but I know you. You're ambitious. You need a challenge. Being a school counselor isn't going to do it for you. You're going to want to get a Master's, then a PhD, and then, I don't know, maybe a few more Bachelor's degrees, and you're going to meet people a million times smarter and cooler and richer than me in California and you're going to wonder, 'What the hell did I ever see in that idiot gearhead from high school?'"

Jean looked shocked. "Scott, you really think that's what's going to happen?" She twisted around to face him. "First of all, I don't want to spend the rest of my life in college. I want..." she paused and smiled to herself, as if she was trying not to reveal a secret, "I want more than that, someday."

He shrugged. "I just thought, since you liked school so much, you'd want to stay there."

"Well, this is a school too, silly," she joked affectionately. He couldn't make himself smile back at her.

Her grin disappeared, and she put her hands on both sides of his head. He felt a tiny chill of excitement as she ran her fingers through his light brown hair.

"Can I?" she asked.

He nodded, goosebumps forming on his arms with anticipation. Then came a soft, numbing comfort, like a very small dose of morphine.

She was reading his mind. There was nothing he could do to stop her, and once she was in, he never seemed to want her to leave, no matter what she did.

She probed deeply, holding his rapt attention with her gaze, like a hypnotist lulling her patient. Scenes of worst case scenarios flashed through his mind:

Watching Jean leave him.

Watching her die from some freak accident, something he should have been able to save her from.

Being alone forever.

She glided past his conscious fears to a memory. He saw his brother, Alex, as he looked a year ago when he'd first introduced Scott to Professor Xavier and his friend and fellow X-Man, Hank McCoy. Alex was skinny, but with strong facial features and a broad smile. He had long hair the same shade as Scott's and wore an oversized yellow coat.

It was last time he saw him before he died.

He felt her go deeper, into the memories of his many foster parents, some wonderful and loving, others who passed out on the couch after shooting up heroin or drinking themselves into a stupor.

Then she went even farther, past conscious thoughts, worries, memories, even nightmares, into something instinctual. Some primal, reptilian fear in the far reaches of his mind came foaming to the surface like a terrifying, formless monster.

He felt his stomach turn, like he'd reached the top of a roller coaster about to descend. His arms and face went numb, his mouth went dry, and he began to hyperventilate. "Jean," he whimpered, despite his best efforts to keep calm.

She gasped as she realized what was happening. "Shh, I'm sorry, it's okay," she whispered, and he felt another soothing dose of telepathic morphine. His heartbeat slowed, and his panic attack subsided as quickly as it'd surfaced. "I guess I went a little too deep," she said as she lowered her hands from his temples and released him from her telepathic grip.

"It's all right," said Scott, relieved. He felt a little sting as the numbness wore off, like an arm that had fallen asleep suddenly waking up again. "I guess now I don't have to tell you what I'm afraid of."

She took his hand and gently played with his fingers, still a little greasy. "I already knew what you were afraid of. I wanted to see when your abandonment issues started." She looked at him apologetically, like she thought even mentioning it might trigger another panic attack.

He smiled at her. "You don't even need a Psych degree."

"I know how to get to people's fears, but I have no idea what to do about them," she said.

He held her hands firmly in his. They were slender, and always a little cold. He felt the need to keep her warm every time he touched them. "You did a lot for me right after Alex died, after we defeated Apocalypse." He paused a moment. "Well, after _you_ defeated Apocalypse."

"You helped."

He laughed. "Not much." His smile faded. "You were always there when I needed to talk, when I felt too angry and depressed to even function..." he trailed off and looked away. She'd done more than be there for him. The first time he'd had the courage to say, 'I love you,' to her, he felt as if part of his soul had come back from the grave, the part that was buried with his brother.

She laid her head on his chest, and he kissed her hair, catching a whiff of her flowery shampoo. He hoped she couldn't hear his heart skip a few beats.

"I'm going to miss you so much," she said. "I'm never going to meet anyone more wonderful than you in California. I'm coming back. I promise. And when I do, then maybe..." Her cheeks flushed bright red as she stumbled over her secret. "Maybe, we could... if we're still, you know... and if you want to..."

"Get married?" The words flew out of Scott's mouth before he could stop them. He let go of her hands and blushed. He felt another panic attack rising in his stomach.

 _What the hell is wrong with you?!_ He inwardly screamed at himself. He would have felt less terrified if he'd suddenly had a gun pointed at his head.

Jean's blush expanded to her neck and forehead. She swallowed, taking a few excruciating moments to finally say, "Yeah."

Scott stared at her, stunned. His panic turned to confused excitement, then joy. He put his hand on her face, brushed his thumb across her soft cheek, and kissed her deeply.

"I love you, Jean," he whispered.

"I love you, too," she replied.

He looked into her beautiful emerald eyes, committing this moment to his memory forever, then noticed a streak of something on her face. "Oh," he said, as he drew back his hand from her cheek. His laugh turned more embarrassed than joyful.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I got a little grease on you, sorry." He tried to wipe the smudge away with his other hand, but only succeeded in smearing it around. He caught a glimpse of her hands and realized, to his dismay, he'd gotten grease all over them, too. "Hold on," he said, as he began frantically searching for a shop rag. He wanted to kick himself in the head for ruining what was supposed to be one of the most wonderful moments of his life.

She stopped him, locking her arms behind his head to bring her face next to his. "I don't mind getting a little dirty," she said seductively.

Perhaps he hadn't ruined everything yet.

They kissed again, then stood together, lips still locked in passion. Scott led them over to Old Daisy. He jacked the car back down with one foot and opened the door to the backseat.

The minute hand of the clock on the shop wall marched past 12:30. As far as Jean and Scott were concerned, time could go take a flying leap.


	4. Part 4 - Mother's Keeper

Raven glared impatiently at the clock on the wall of the control room. It read 12:56, but none of the X-Men were there yet. She told them 13:00, 1 o'clock, and when she said sharp, she meant on the dot. It especially wasn't like Scott or Jean to cut it this close. They were usually suited up 15 minutes before training even started.

She checked her digital watch; 12:56 turned into 12:57 just as the analog clock ticked over, too. They couldn't both be wrong.

She paced the room in her yellow and black flight suit, which doubled as the X-Men's uniform. Hank McCoy, codename Beast, fiddled with the buttons and switches of the master controls. He was in his brown haired, bespectacled human form at the moment instead of the blue, furry, mutant body he'd accidentally turned himself into long ago. She'd known him for years, and had watched him inject the medicine that turned him into a human hundreds of times, but it never failed to make her feel sad for him. Telling him he didn't need the stuff never seemed to make a difference, either.

On the other hand, who was she to judge? She felt a little safer in public when she transformed into a normal looking human, too. But Hank took his medicine whether he was in public or not. In fact, she hadn't seen his beastly mutant side in months.

Below them in the danger room, Hank watched as the mechanical obstacles clanged into place. All of the blast-proof doors sprang from the top and bottom of the room, then retracted, followed one-by-one by all the metal tentacles, electrical barriers, laser stun turrets, and wind machines.

After he was certain everything was in working order, he began typing into the control room computer. A brand new, souped-up IBM motherboard hummed and clicked below the control panel, running an astounding 8 megabytes of RAM, which held nearly 100 different programmed obstacle courses.

He typed 'start_course_brotherskeeper' into the DOS command line, leaving the cursor blinking at the end.

"There we go," said Hank. He spun around in his chair and adjusted his glasses. "It's ready, all you have to do is press the 'enter' key."

"I know," said Raven, attempting not to roll her eyes. The computer was fairly new, but it wasn't as if she couldn't figure out how to start it on her own.

"Are you all right, Raven?" he asked in his quiet, bookish voice. "You look a little tired."

"Not much sleep," she replied with a sigh. She looked at the clock again; 12:58. Still no X-Men. "Jean woke everyone up at 8 this morning."

"Oh yes, I heard! Stanford! Good for her. You know, I had one or two colleagues from Stanford, back in the day."

She snorted. "'Back in the day.' God, Hank, you sound like an old man already."

"We _are_ old, technically, by most social standards. Though you..." He trailed off and cleared his throat uncomfortably.

She raised an eyebrow. "I what?"

"I was only going to say, you never looked a day past 25."

In another time, perhaps she would have been graciously flattered. Now his kindness left a bitter aftertaste that should have been sweeter.

"I can look however old I want," she replied, matter of factly.

Hank, suddenly becoming absorbed in the control panel again, twisted one of the knobs back and forth. "This one's a bit sticky," he muttered to himself. He took the knob out of the panel and started cleaning the shaft inside. "Don't you usually get up much earlier than 8, anyway?" he asked her.

"Yes, but... I guess I've been having nightmares," she muttered.

"No wonder you've got bags under your eyes," he said absentmindedly, sticking the knob back into the panel.

Raven stiffened a bit. Classic Hank. Flattery and criticism, unflinchingly uttered in nearly the same breath.

Suddenly, the phone on the wall began to ring, startling them. Hank and Raven both instinctively moved to answer it, but before they could, Kurt teleported in between them with a puff of smoke, breathless and dressed in brown slacks and a red-and-white raglan tee shirt.

"Sorry," he panted, "I got a collect call a few minutes ago, but I didn't want to hang up so soon, so I transferred the call down here so I wouldn't be late and... can I take it, please?"

The phone continued to ring as Kurt waited for Raven's permission. "I... sure," she said, confounded.

He picked it up and said, " _Hallo, Mama?_ "

Raven's heart froze. Kurt faced the wall and continued to speak in German to his adoptive mother.

She stared at him and imagined for the slightest moment that he was talking to her.

Hank, finally noticing her discomfort, put a hand on her shoulder. "Would you come down to the danger room with me so we can fix that turret?" he asked her, already leading her towards the elevator.

"What turr- oh," she said, for once being the clueless one in the room.

She watched Kurt coil the phone cord around his tail as the elevator door closed and they descended into the danger room.

* * *

Raven stared up at the window of the control room above them, watching Kurt smile and speak fond words she couldn't hear, words that weren't meant for her. The stainless steel danger room gleamed around them, reflecting polished streams of fluorescent light. Her reflection shone back at her from the floor almost as clearly as a mirror. Despite wearing her uniform, the world felt cold all of a sudden, alien, like the world in her dream. She clutched her arms close to her chest. Hank opened a panel of the wall and pretended to inspect the perfectly functional laser turret.

"You haven't told him yet, have you?" he asked.

She forced her eyes away from the window. "No," she said, after a long pause.

Hank closed the panel. "Jesus, Raven. Charles and I have kept your secret for almost a year. This is insane."

"This is incredibly hard for me, okay?" she hissed. "How in the hell do you just tell someone you're their mother?" She couldn't keep her voice from cracking. She bit her lip, fighting her tears back with all her might.

"You form the words with your mouth and force air through your larynx."

"Don't be an asshole!" she exploded. The anger helped burn her tears away. "You have no idea what this feels like."

"You're right, I don't. I'm sorry," he said. "Isn't waiting so long just making it harder for the both of you, though? You should have told him when you rescued him from that fight club in Berlin. I mean, if you need someone to be with you when you do it, I could-"

"I can't do it yet, all right, Hank?" she said. "Don't tell him. Please?"

"It's not my place to, anyway," he said. He scratched his head. "Is all of this because of Azazel?"

Raven sensed a trap in the tone of his voice, or perhaps he was pushing a button in her he didn't know was there, even though he damned well should.

"What about Azazel?" she asked.

"Are you afraid of explaining to him that his father... you know... murdered people for a living?" Hank shook his head. "What in God's name did you ever see in him, anyway?" he muttered.

She walked up to him slowly, her blood now boiling with rage instead of frozen with anxiety. She was several inches shorter than Hank, but could intimidate a man twice her size with her burning, yellow eyes and battle-hardened glare. He looked as if he didn't understand he'd set off a nuclear bomb inside of her.

She kept her voice deadly cool. "You seem to be conveniently forgetting that Magneto killed people, too. But do you know what Azazel didn't do? He didn't try to manipulate me, like Eric. He didn't make me feel ashamed of myself, like Charles did. He didn't find my natural body hideous and disgusting, like a certain person I can't remember the name of at the moment."

"I- I never said that," he stammered.

"You tried to get me to take that... stuff... that turns you into a human. You didn't need to say it." Her tears flowed freely down her cheek now, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. "I was just a tool to Magneto. Totally disposable. It took me years before I could look you or Charles in the eye again. Azazel was the only man I've ever met who loved me for who I was."

She marched to the elevator, Hank following close behind. "Raven! Raven, please," he pleaded, but she closed the elevator door before he could get inside.

She kept her finger on the 'close door' button. In her little capsule, she refused to go up or down. Instead, she sat on the floor, tears staining her cheek, her hair, her uniform, and let her anger overwhelm her.


	5. Part 5 - Warm Up

After several minutes, Raven entered the control room again, her tears dry, the bags under her eyes worse. A few more X-Men had shown up in the meantime. Peter spun around in Hank's rolling chair wearing a Rush band shirt and tight, torn blue jeans, listening to his cassette player through earphones. Ororo leaned against the wall in her favorite leather jacket and black tights. Kurt still spoke to his mother in German, but his words had the universal tone of someone attempting to end a phone conversation and failing.

"Just wanted to let you know," Peter said to Raven, popping out one earphone, "I got here three seconds before 1. Technically not late."

"You are such a liar, Quicksilver," said Ororo, using his codename. "You got here when I did."

He pointed a playfully accusing finger at her, "Which makes _you_ late, Storm. Do your push ups! Get to it! Hup, hup!"

She pushed his chair with her foot, scooting him near Nightcrawler. "Where are your push ups?" she teased.

"Did 'em already. Just now," Peter replied. He spun around to face Kurt and poked him in the side. "Is that your Mommy wishing you a Happy Birthday?"

 _Kurt's birthday,_ Raven thought. Jesus, how in the hell could she forget something like that? Maybe that's why her nightmare was so vivid. A knot of guilt formed in her stomach, and she nearly turned around to hide in the elevator again.

Kurt rolled his eyes at Peter and continued talking. With a mischievous smirk on his face, Quicksilver snatched the phone out of his hand in a flash.

" _Hallo, Fraulein Wagner_!" he spoke into the receiver with a horrible, overwrought accent. " _Wo bist du?_ "

Kurt grabbed the phone back and covered the receiver. "It's, ' _wie bist du_ ,' you idiot," he hissed at Peter, then apologized to his mother.

"I am _not_ in the mood for this bullshit, people," Raven barked. Her young charges, shocked and embarrassed, looked cautiously at each other. Kurt finally hung up the phone. Raven took a deep breath and glanced at the clock; 1:10. "Does anyone have a clue where Cyclops and Jean are?" she asked, a bit more calmly.

Right on cue, they both burst through the double doors of the control room.

"Hey," said Scott, panting and leaning over with his hands on his knees, "We're not late, are we, Mystique?" he asked Raven.

She didn't reply. She only glared coldly at them, letting them figure out the mess they'd waded into for themselves. They looked at the clock, then at her, then at each other.

"We had to... um... fix something," said Jean.

"She was helping me fix my visor," Scott blurted, "The new, adjustable one, you know. The button wasn't working, so..." He trailed off as it became obvious no one in the room was buying it.

Raven examined them closer. Scott's perfectly coiffed hair was a mess and Jean's blouse had been buttoned up incorrectly. It didn't take a genius to figure out what they'd done with their afternoon.

Peter leaned back in the rolling chair, making lewd sexual hand gestures behind Raven's back. No one dared laugh, not when she was in this kind of mood. Just then, the elevator door opened and Hank stepped out. His medicine had worn off, and he was now his blue, bestial, muscular self. Peter quickly put his hands behind his head in a fake stretch.

Raven pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Everyone but Nightcrawler, report to the danger room and give me 30 push ups and 10 pull ups. _And_ 5 laps."

"But-" Peter began.

"Do you want to make it 10 for everybody?" Raven dared him.

He shut his mouth and groaned. Hank moved towards the double doors, but she stepped in front of him, blocking his way.

"Beast, where do you think you're going?" she asked, as if he was a child sneaking off with the cookie jar.

He looked surprised and pointed to the doors. "I've got a lot of papers to grade, so..."

"When I said, 'Everyone but Nightcrawler,' I meant you, too. You haven't done a training session in way too long," she said. "You can't let yourself go," she added smugly.

Beast looked down at his gut and pinched a tiny sliver of flab. "I haven't let myself go," he muttered.

She turned around and faced the rest of the X-Men, clasping her hands behind her back. "All right, team, suit up and get on the floor, hustle!"

"Yes, ma'am," they replied with varying degrees of enthusiasm, making their way to the locker room off to the side.

Kurt was the last to leave the room. He put a three-fingered hand on the door, then gave a worried glance back at Mystique, as if he wanted to say something.

Her stomach tightened. "Well?" she asked, a little too sharply.

He snapped out of it and silently hurried through the locker room door.

She stared straight ahead at the control room monitor, trying to calm down by matching her breath to the rhythmic blinking of the bright green cursor.

* * *

After the team had completed their punishment, plus stretches and warm ups, Mystique turned on the P.A system. A small click echoed throughout the danger room, drawing the X-Men's attention to the window above them.

"This one is for everyone except Quicksilver," said Mystique, "Come back up to the control room."

Peter threw up his hands and shook his head incredulously at her. Within a heartbeat, he was gone from the floor and sliding around on the rolling chair again, his entrance punctuated by a tiny breeze.

"What the hell?" he asked. "Why make me come today if I'm not even running this course?"

She momentarily turned off the microphone. "Oh don't worry, I'll make you run until your legs fall off later," she answered, much to his chagrin. "This course requires teamwork, and you need to start learning how a team operates instead of just doing everyone else's work for them."

"But it's so easy when you can just outrun everything," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Exactly."

She turned the mic back on. "Listen up," she said, "because this course is a little different from the ones you're used to." She pressed the 'enter' key, and the room below her began to telescopically expand to form a long hallway, each section rumbling and thundering into place.

She continued, "So far, I've been giving you courses that you could each handle on your own; therefore, the course was considered complete if you crossed the finish line individually. In this course, there will be sections that are impossible to cross without the help of a teammate. That means, the course is incomplete for everyone until each one of you makes it to the end."

Panels slid back to reveal huge digital timers on the ceiling and walls. Each of them read '5:00:00' in bright red numbers, blinking steadily.

"You have 5 minutes to complete the course, without any 'casualties.' Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am!" they shouted from the floor, their voices metallic in the overhead speaker.

"Can I pipe in some tunes?" asked Quicksilver, holding up his Walkman.

"No!" she snapped.

Peter shrugged and put a plug in his ear. She heard "Tom Sawyer" play faintly through the other dangling earphone.

Her hand hovered over the 'enter' key. "Ready... set... go!" She pressed the button, the timers rapidly began to count backwards, and their training began.


	6. Part 6 - Danger Room

The X-Men rushed down the danger room hallway, attempting to outrun a gigantic steel door closing in from the ceiling. Cyclops, at the front of the pack, was the first to reach it just as it closed and locked into place.

They looked around them at the empty section of hallway. They formed a circle facing outwards, prepared for something, anything to happen.

After a few tense seconds, Nightcrawler relaxed slightly, a confused look on his face. "Is this part broken?" he asked.

Suddenly, laser turrets popped out from the walls, firing wildly in every direction. "Hit the deck!" screamed Cyclops, instinctively grabbing Jean and shoving her behind him. The others fell to the ground, dodging lasers and sparks flying from where they ricocheted off the floor.

Cyclops adjusted his visor to full power and pressed the button on the side, releasing a blinding red blast of pure energy from his eyeballs. The beam of force shattered each of the turrets like toy guns and left a line of burn marks around the room. They sparked in fitful death throes, then retreated back into the walls to be automatically repaired.

The door rose, allowing them into the next section. It consisted of a menacing electrical barrier blocking the exit and two gigantic wind machines near the entrance. Before they even had a chance to catch their breath, the fans began to spin, the wind sweeping them all off of their feet and steadily sliding towards the barriers, ready to give them a nasty shock.

"This one is mine!" shouted Storm, slowly coming to her knees. She precariously balanced herself against the tremendous wind. Her eyes clouded over, the barometric pressure dropped, and the humidity rose as she created her own storm, curdling precipitation into clouds from thin air. She concentrated her power at the fans, counteracting their wind with her own natural tempest. It slowed them down, allowing the rest of the X-Men to stand. Against her resistance, the fans began to spin even faster to counteract her.

"I cannot hold them much longer!" she cried to her teammates.

"What about the barrier?" Jean shouted to Beast above the deafening gale, holding on to Cyclops's shoulder.

"You can't ask the programmer," Beast yelled back to her, "Mystique would kill me if I gave you any hints."

Cyclops looked for the source of the electric beams criss-crossing the exit like a chain link fence. The generator was hidden behind one of the walls: it would be impossible for his eye beams to penetrate them in time and blow the generator to pieces before Storm lost control.

"Storm," he called out to her, "hit the fence with lightning, quick!"

"Watch out!" she warned the X-Men, and they scurried to either side of the room. With one hand fending off the wind machines, she focused part of her power in her other hand and pointed to the exit. From her fingers she sent a booming crack of lightning, slamming the fence and instantly shorting it, and it seemed, the power in the entire danger room. The team groaned.

"Sorry," said Storm, adjusting her wind-battered hair.

"Wait," said Nightcrawler, "if the power went out, then why are the timers still going?" Indeed, the timers glowed red in the darkness and were counting down, three minutes left to go. Their glow, unfortunately, couldn't give shape to anything in the blinding darkness.

The door to the next section opened quietly. As the X-Men very gingerly made their way inside, Jean felt a chill, as if something was terribly wrong. She put a hand on her temple, focusing her energy. Her strong sense of telekinesis picked up on something moving silently in the room.

She felt along the floor with her power as if she were using her hand. There were small grooves... no... gaps in the floor stretching across the room vertically and horizontally, making a grid with squares about two feet big.

But what was moving?

Suddenly, she felt it again. Something metal and sharp zipped silently through the gaps, coming dangerously close to Beast's heels. Another one popped up and barely grazed Nightcrawler's tail, making him jump.

" _Was war das_?!" he yelped. "Something touched me!"

Jean telepathically took note of everyone's positions. She felt their presences scattered throughout the room, their minds on edge and disoriented. Another saw whooshed by from the right, and another from behind. Storm stood directly on a gap, right in the path of the next one.

Jean instinctively thrust her power in Storm's direction, knocking her out of the way.

"Hold on everybody," she said. To the X-Men's surprise, they all began rising into the air. Jean carefully balanced their different weights, hoping no one would make any sudden movements as she scurried across the floor to the exit, dodging saws whizzing by. She gently lowered them back down safely next to the door. The fluorescent lights buzzed back on, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Unfortunately, it was short lived. The next door opened to reveal shining, slithering metal tentacles crawling out of the walls, like the limbs of a giant, mechanical octopus.

"Great. Awesome," whispered Cyclops, oozing sarcasm.

The tentacles faced the door, as if they heard him, and bolted towards the team faster than striking cobras.

They tried desperately to free themselves even though the jungle of tentacles coiled around them from all sides. Storm's rain and lightening did nothing to slow them down. Jean attempted to stop them telekinetically, but there were too many to hold on to. Cyclops's arms were pinned to his sides so he couldn't reach his visor, and Nightcrawler tried teleporting out of each tentacle's grip, dodging and flipping like the nimble acrobat he was, only to be grabbed by another.

Beast snarled as two tentacles grabbed him tightly around the torso and squeezed with hundreds of pounds of force. Grabbing a tentacle with each hand and using every ounce of his raw strength, he let out a mighty roar, ripping them out of the wall like an angry gorilla. The tentacles loosened and clattered limply to the floor.

He clambered around the room on all fours like an ape, ripping all of the tentacles from their sockets and freeing his teammates one by one. The dying metal jittered and sparked all around them, the steel jungle turned into a scrap heap.

Panting, exhausted, and with only 30 seconds to spare, the team faced their last challenge: a series of wide, blast proof doors loomed before them, opening and shutting smoothly one right after the other, like a syncopated, undulating wave.

"This one must be yours, Nightcrawler," said Storm, patting him on the shoulder. "No problem, right?"

Nightcrawler gulped. He needed to be able to see his target clearly before teleporting to it, but he could only catch the tiniest glimpse of the end of the course through the last door before the first one shut a fraction of a second later, starting the wave over again. The doors were bone-crushingly huge with no space in between them. If he teleported incorrectly... he shuddered. He didn't want to think about getting a limb stuck through one of those things.

"I can only take two of you at a time, or I might pass out," he told them.

"Hurry, then," said Storm. "We're running out of time."

He made the sign of the cross, grabbed Cyclops's and Beast's arms, and was gone with them in a puff of smoke.

They were swallowed by a dark, ethereal plane with no floor or ceiling or walls. They floated forward, as light as feathers. Nightcrawler feared they may be just as fragile. Only tiny fragments of light and sound from the real world escaped into void, flittering past them like mosquitoes. He focused entirely on the goal, using all his energy to propel himself forward and concentrate on the tiny peek of the finish line. Suddenly, the void ripped apart and the room materialized before them. He jumped through, carrying his friends with him.

He did the same again, going back through the treacherous hallway to reach Storm and Jean waiting on the other side. He wobbled a bit, feeling dizzy with the pressure of a difficult 'port. He took a few deep breaths and leaned on the wall.

"Are you okay?" asked Jean.

He nodded, put his hands on their shoulders, and they all disappeared.

The void seemed deeper, longer this time, harder to push through, as if the air had grown thick. He tried to focus again, but his mind was fluttering. The image of safe haven didn't come easily to him.

Finally, he saw it: a clear image of Beast and Cyclops waited at the finish line for him and the girls, but something wasn't right. They were too far away, it wasn't where he had 'ported last time. With overwhelming dread he realized his trajectory was in the way of the last door. Thankfully it was still open, for another split second, at least. With the emptiness once again ripped apart, it was too late to change his landing.

He propelled himself forward with all his might. Jean lost her balance and tumbled forward into the room, out of reach of the door, while Nightcrawler and Storm landed on the edge of it. He felt the back of his neck grow cold. Grey oblivion creeped into the corners of his vision.

He forced himself to keep from fainting. _Almost there,_ he told himself.

Suddenly, the door rumbled beneath them. Storm and Nightcrawler fell backwards together as it began to slam shut.

Before their minds could form words to scream, before anyone else had a chance to turn and see their friends crushed, Nightcrawler teleported himself and Storm again with the last of his strength. There was no image in his mind of a safe place in front of him, no specks of light whizzing past in the dark. At the limits of his consciousness, he wasn't sure whether he was really teleporting, or just fainting.

Either way, he and Storm would soon be gone.


	7. Part 7 - Stuck

From the control room, Mystique saw Nightcrawler teleport Storm just as the last door closed, blocking her view of the finish line. She stopped the timers and obstacles in their tracks and breathed a sigh of relief. She honestly didn't know if the team could finish a brand new course with new rules without at least one 'casualty', but they exceeded her expectations by leaps and bounds.

"Whooo!" Quicksilver shouted into the mic, thrusting his fists into the air in celebration. Feedback squealed through the speakers. "You guys are awesome! That was so freaking intense, with the lasers and the tentacles! Oh my god!"

Mystique nudged him out of the way. "Great job guys. A little shaky with the wind machines Storm, but I think-"

"Mystique," said Beast over the P.A. system, "Storm and Nightcrawler aren't here."

"But... I saw them teleport," she said, confused. "Where did they go?"

Peter and Mystique looked at each other. Without a word, he grabbed her, his hand behind her head for support, and ran faster than the speed of sound into the danger room.

A millisecond later, they joined the team on the floor. Jean held her hand to her temple, telepathically scanning for the missing X-Men's thought patterns as the rest of the team looked on worriedly.

"Where are they, Jean?" asked Mystique.

"I don't know, they're not..." she began, then a spark of realization appeared in her eyes.

"Oh. Oh, that's not good."

* * *

Kurt opened his eyes. He thought they were open, at least. He was still in pitch darkness. The air was thick, stale, and hard to breathe.

 _I'm not in pain,_ he thought, _so I must not be dying._

 _Or I suppose I could already be dead._

He tentatively moved his arms and hit something hard not a few inches in front of him. He was lying on his back against something equally as uncomfortable.

He thought of the box he'd been stuffed into back in Germany, when he was taken to a mutant fighting ring in Berlin. He'd stayed in that horrible thing for at least a day, unable to move, without food or water or a toilet break. Had his kidnappers found him again in New York? Why else would he be in a box...

A coffin. He was in a coffin.

He was dead, they buried him already, he knew it. As he adjusted his arms to try to push his way out of his own grave, he realized he wasn't lying on his back at all. He was standing up.

 _They don't stand coffins straight in the ground like that in America, do they?_ he pondered to himself.

He heard someone moan rather close by, startling him.

 _I know they don't put more than one person in a coffin,_ he thought.

"What is happening?" asked Ororo groggily. Kurt felt her hand reach out and brush his own. He grabbed it and squeezed, attempting to reassure both of them.

"Ororo, are you hurt?" he asked.

"I don't think so, but..." she stopped. Her hand let go of his. He heard her feel along the wall in front of them, then she begin to moan wordlessly in fear.

"It's all right," he said, feeling for her hand again. "If you're not hurt, then we're going to be fine."

"No!" she screamed suddenly, repeating it over and over. She banged against their dark, stuffy prison with her hands and knees, heard her push and flail frantically. Her screams turned from words into primal, unintelligible screeches.

The rest of the team heard her faint, muffled screams from the direction of the hallway of doors.

"They're in there!" said Jean.

"They can't be," said Raven, her fear quickly turning to dread, "I would have seen them somewhere in the rest of the danger room."

"No, you don't understand," said Jean, "they're _inside_ the door."

"It's... hollow?" said Hank, confused.

"You didn't know that? I thought you helped build this thing?" asked Raven.

"I only programmed it, I didn't build it!" Hank exclaimed.

"Never mind. I'm calling Magneto, he can get them out," she said as she turned to leave. Before she could reach the elevator, the lights flickered, and a low, ominous rumble rattled the walls.

"We might not have time to wait for him," said Jean.

Raven still hurried to the control room and dialed Eric's number, praying that he'd answer.

* * *

Kurt groped around in the dark, trying to grab Storm's arm to calm her down as she continued to wail.

"We are going to die!" she screamed. "We are going to run out of oxygen and die!" She broke down into pitiful sobs.

Kurt made a mental image of the control room. It was fresh in his mind, so he might be able to teleport to it without seeing it in front of him, despite his weakened state. He got a hold of her wrist.

"Don't worry, I will-"

Before he could finish his sentence, she ripped her hand away and smashed his face with her palm. He shouted in pain. Blood start gushing from his nose and lip.

The claustrophobic space lit up with tiny sparks of lightning flying from her clenched fists. The air filled with the scent of ozone. He saw a glimpse of her mad, glaring eyes as they clouded over.

She screamed again, placing her hands flat on the door and sending blinding streaks up the side, like sheet lightning.

"This thing is metal, Storm! Are you insane?" Kurt shouted through his bloody lips, pushing himself as far away from her he could. "You are going to kill us both! Let me-"

"No!" Ororo yelled. "You got us in this mess, and I will get us out!" she sent another streak up the side, making Kurt's hair stand on end from the static.

"Storm," yelled Jean from the other side, though neither of Ororo nor Kurt could hear her, "You have to calm down, let me help you!" She concentrated as hard as she could on her friend's terrified brain. Images of darkness, death, fear, and anger roiled around in Ororo's mind like a raging hurricane. Jean had to rip herself away lest she be carried off in the current of her thoughts.

"Well?" asked Scott.

"I can't get to her when she's like this," said Jean, "It's like her mind's on fire. We need to get the Professor."

"On it," said Peter, and he raced upstairs.

* * *

Time stretched into a standstill for Quicksilver as he ran through the mansion, looking for the Professor. He passed kids frozen on the stairs, smiling at each other, living statues in the middle of an inside joke. He checked the Professor's room: empty. He methodically checked every open bedroom he could find, to no avail.

He ran back downstairs into the kitchen. No Professor, but he noticed a girl about a centimeter away from chopping off her finger while dicing carrots. He moved her knife just a smidge, stole a baby carrot for himself, and continued on his search.

He zipped around, looking throughout the various parlor rooms on the ground floor, where the Professor usually taught classes. All he saw were kids suspended in various forms of time wasting activities; drawing, reading, studying, watching TV, like some kind of modern Renaissance painting.

He caught a glimpse of the vast lawn through a window near the fireplace and stopped, his surroundings still frozen around him. The trees strained, keeled over in an invisible wind, the clouds a threatening pea green color. In the far distance, he witnessed a streak of lightning slowly creep down from the sky.

He crunched the rest of his baby carrot, taking his sweet time. No need to panic. There was always time, as long as he was using his powers. He watched big blobs of rain fall outside, like liquid floating in outer space, and thought long and hard about where the Professor could possibly be.

He smacked his head. "Duh!" he exclaimed to no one in particular.

He ran to the Professor's office. The doors were closed and locked tight. He slowed back down to regular speed, the people around him speeding up and going about their business as normal. He heard the sound of the wind howling outside. Several heads turned to look as the crack of thunder finally reached the mansion.

Peter knocked like an impatient woodpecker on the Professor's office door. A few agonizingly slow seconds later, a blonde preteen boy opened the door a crack.

"Is the Professor in there?" Quicksilver asked, trying to peer above the boy's head to look into the room.

"Yeah, but..." he looked behind him at his classmates, "we're kinda in the middle of a final."

"Ok well, this is kinda more important than that," he said, trying to scooch his way into the room. The boy blocked him, closing the door a bit more.

"If it was that important, the Professor would know about it already," said the boy.

Peter groaned. He was seriously contemplating how much trouble he'd be willing to get into for ripping the door off the hinges.

"Sam," the Professor's calm, British accent came from inside the room. "Let him in, please."

Peter brushed by Sam, past the students focused intensely on their tests, and towards Professor Charles Xavier sitting in his wheelchair behind his desk. The Professor put a finger on his bald temple, reading Peter's mind as he walked in. His brow furrowed in a worried frown as he realized the enormity of the danger they were in.

"We got a situation downstairs," said Peter, without the slightest hint of tact.

The Professor coughed uncomfortably as the students looked up from their tests. "It's all right everyone, please continue, I'll be back in just a few minutes."

As Professor Xavier wheeled away from his desk, he realized his students' rapt attention wasn't on him or Peter, but something outside. He looked behind him through the window and his jaw dropped.

A tornado was beginning to form right in front of the mansion, quickly becoming darker and thicker in a mesmerizing snake charmer's dance.

A girl screamed, breaking the spell and setting off a chain reaction of utter panic.

"Everyone, stay calm," urged the Professor. He gave further instructions as the kids nearly fell over themselves to escape the room, "Go downstairs, don't use the elevator, and take others with you!"

Before he could turn back around to ask Peter what the hell he was doing still standing around, an ear-shattering _kaboom_ shook the walls, and the lights flickered out for good.

"Well, that's nice," said Peter, picking a piece of carrot out of his teeth.

"Get me down there, you bloody fool!" yelled the Professor.

* * *

Clouds were starting to form near the ceiling the moment Peter left the danger room. They rolled like an angry sea, blackening as they sucked up all of the moisture in the atmosphere. It grew bone-chillingly cold and within a few seconds, hail and sleet began falling from the indoor clouds.

Scott glanced up at the control room. He saw Raven slam down the phone, obviously having no luck contacting Magneto. He began looking for anything that could free them faster before Ororo froze everyone to death. He knew the door was blast-proof: his laser beam eyes wouldn't be able to penetrate it. Hank would have no luck tearing through them, either.

"Jean, can you try getting this door apart?" he asked.

She concentrated her telekinetic energy on it, feeling around for any weak points. The door was solid. All of the seams were welded together, except one.

She slowly lifted the door back up into the ceiling, straining against thousands of pounds of pressure and the hail pelting her head. The bottom of the door was riveted shut, but not welded.

"I can keep the door open or tear the bottom part of the door off, but I can't do both at once," she said.

"Can you keep it open from the control panel, Hank?" Scott asked.

"It's the one that sticks," he replied, moving sopping wet fur out of his eyes. "But I could-"

Suddenly, another burst of lightning spread from the inside of the door, the electricity naturally finding its way groundward. A tiny bolt struck close to Jean's feet. She screamed and almost lost her telekinetic grip on the door.

Hank held up his finger and said, "I was going to say, I could hold the door, but now I'm having second thoughts."

"Hank, you hairy coward!" yelled Raven through the P.A. system, "Hold the god damned door open or I will break your kneecaps!"

Hank did as he was told, groaning as the full weight of the door lowered onto his shoulders.

Jean refocused her energy on the rivets on the bottom of the door. The metal screeched and moaned as she ripped out the bolts and slowly rolled the metal back, like a rock solid sleeping bag.

Kurt heard the metal screeching and saw the beam of light from the corner of the door before Ororo did.

"Storm!" he grabbed her hand, risking a horrible electric shock, or another punch in the face. "Ororo, look!"

He finally saw her face as his eyes adjusted to the light. It was tear streaked, her eyes still clouded over and puffy from crying. He couldn't tell if her light brown skin looked deathly pale or if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

She scrambled towards the light, still sobbing breathlessly. Kurt followed inches behind.

Just then, the lights in the danger room went out at the same time as they had upstairs. They continued making their way towards the hole, nonetheless. As they got closer, Kurt gulped breathfuls of cold, fresh air and heard the hail falling from the clouds, bouncing off the metal floor like golf balls.

Jean carefully lowered Ororo to the ground. She still shook and sobbed as the emergency lights came on, revealing Peter back in the room, holding the Professor in his arms.

"Come here, my dear," said the Professor, beckoning to her like a concerned father to his child.

Ororo rushed to the Professor's side, and he put his hands on her temples. Her sobs turned to quiet sniffles and hiccups. Her eyes became clear again, and the hail and sleet finally stopped.

She buried her face into his shoulder. "I'm so sorry," she moaned, her voice muffled by his suit jacket.

"It's all right now, Ororo," he put a hand on her hair, stroking it gently. "You're safe. We're all safe."

Raven watched with bated breath as Kurt slipped out of the hole in the door, all of his limbs still intact. Her relief turned to fear when she saw a stream of blood oozing from his nose and mouth. She ran to him as Hank let the door fall with a loud _slam_.

"What in the hell happened?" she asked, anger leaking through her concern.

Kurt glanced at Ororo, then looked away sheepishly, unable to make eye contact with anyone.

His timid non-response made her furious. She pointed accusingly at him. "You're going to tell me what in God's name you were thinking, or-"

"Enough!" yelled the Professor. Ororo jerked her head back and wiped away her tears. "Training is over, everyone," he continued. "Go make sure all the children are safe and accounted for."

The rest of the X-Men quickly, silently filed past Raven and Peter, still holding the Professor in his arms. Kurt wiped a bit of dried blood from his nose and teleported away.

" _We_ are going to talk," said Charles to Raven, his words full of barely repressed venom.


	8. Part 8 - Communicaton Breakdown

After Professor X had instructed Peter to bring his wheelchair down to the control room, Raven changed out of her sopping wet uniform and into a warm robe. The control room was freezing from the hail slowly evaporating in the danger room. She and Charles sat together, alone, daring each other silently to speak first.

Finally, Charles sighed and rested his head in both hands. "How did you let this happen?"

She tilted her head indignantly. "I... _let_... this happen?" she asked. "How is this my fault?"

"You are responsible for the safety of the X-Men during training and on the field," he answered curtly. "You design the obstacle courses according to my suggestion, Hank programs them. There is a misunderstanding somewhere in this chain of events, obviously."

Raven got up and paced the floor. "So it's my fault that Storm can't control herself?" She pointed through the window to the danger room below, "I didn't design any part of that course that they can't conceivably get through."

"And yet that is precisely what happened!" Charles yelled. "I've told you time and time again, Kurt cannot go through something solid if he can't clearly see the other side, or if he doesn't know what's there."

"A door!" She threw up her hands. "A door should not be a problem for him! And he teleported through most of them fine!"

"I've done full physiological and psychological evaluations on all of the X-Men," he spoke over her, "and asking Kurt to teleport that way is like asking a man with one eye to do something that requires precise depth perception." He pointed to his own legs, "It's like asking me to jump!"

"Okay, fine," she said, "why haven't you been helping Storm through her claustrophobia, then? That's something you _can_ fix."

Charles looked away, flustered. "It's more complicated, more intense, than a normal phobia. I can't do exposure therapy by putting her safely in a confined space without risking something like what happened today."

"You could just brainwash her, right? Like you did to Moira?"

He clenched his jaw and glared at her. She couldn't help feeling a slight sense of satisfaction. The only way she knew to win an argument with her adoptive brother was by picking at scars that ran deep.

Charles put his finger on his temple. She knew he was scanning her mind, looking for scars to pick himself, she imagined.

 _I am not attempting to get back at you,_ said Charles's voice telepathically from inside her mind. _I want to see what's wrong._

"There's nothing wrong with me, Charles," she lied out loud.

He removed his finger from his head and clasped his hands in front of him, elbows on the armrest of his wheelchair. _His therapist pose_ , thought Raven.

"You're having that dream again, aren't you?" he asked.

She sighed and sat down in the spinning chair next to the control panel. After gathering her courage, she finally spoke.

"It was different this time," she said, her eyes focused on something far away. "Kurt was there, grown up, and Azazel said he was going to take him away..." she trailed off.

"Where?"

She just shook her head.

"Well," said Charles, shifting in his wheelchair, "I know what you _think_ your dream means. You believe it's prophetic, that Kurt is going to the afterworld with Azazel, so to speak. In other words, you're afraid he may die."

His blunt words chilled her heart, because she knew they were true. She wanted to put her hands over her ears and run out of the room like a child.

"If you were a telepath given to precognition, I might have believed that explanation, given what happened today," he continued, "but since you aren't, I think it's something else."

"What?" she asked expectantly.

"Good lord, Raven," he said, shaking his head and looking at her with genuine pity, "it's as obvious as the nose on your face."

She refused to meet his gaze, instead choosing to pick at her nail.

His pity dissipated slightly. "You know, you're as stubborn as a bloody mule," he said. "Tell Kurt you're his mother. _Tell him._ It's as if you're actually trying to burn bridges so you won't have to cross them. The longer you wait, the more it will hurt both of you, and the more cruel it will be for keeping this a secret for so long."

Suddenly, everything in her heart came flooding out at once. "It doesn't matter, Charles!" she screamed. She attempted to get a hold of herself and control the tone of her voice. "He already has a mother. He has a family. He already grew up without me, so what does it matter if he knows I gave birth to him? It doesn't change anything. I gave up the right to be a part of his life. I have no right..."

She doubled over as though she had a stomach ache and moaned in agony.

Her voice came out in a cracked whisper, "It doesn't matter when I tell him, because he would hate me anyway for giving him up. Why wouldn't he?"

Charles wheeled himself over to her and placed a hand on her head. "He deserves to know. And he's a very kind, forgiving young man. I'm sure-"

She slapped his hand away and sat up straight. "I can't do this. I can't."

"Raven, you willdo this, or..." he stared at her, seemingly unable to complete his sentence.

"Or what?" she asked, getting up and leaning against the wall. She was exhausted, emotionally and physically. She had no more tears to cry, no more anger to fight with, but she still couldn't imagine the confession falling from her lips. At that moment, she knew she was a failure. She couldn't be a mother. She was too afraid to even be a decent person to her son. She laid her head against the wall, and her soul collapsed.

"Just go away," she whispered.

He obeyed, slowly rolling himself towards the control room entrance. He took one last, sad look on his sister before the doors closed.

"You're holding on to a ball and chain for dear life," he said, "and you won't let anyone tell you that it's making you drown."

He forced himself to leave his dear Raven wallowing in self pity.

He knew what had to be done, though she'd never forgive him for it.

* * *

By the time Charles reached his office, the normal lights had come back on. He looked out the window. There were several tree branches scattered about on the grounds, along with a few roof tiles and some of the flimsier patio furniture, but nothing too serious, it seemed. Some of the X-Men were gathered outside, Nightcrawler among them, picking debris off of the soggy lawn. The Professor couldn't help but telepathically eavesdrop on them.

Scott aimed his visor at a broken tree branch hanging perilously by nothing but its bark. "Look out!" he yelled as he hit the branch with a burst of laser energy, sending it crashing to the ground. Jean lifted it with her mind and placed it in a large pile of debris. Kurt picked up smaller branches and tiles and teleported them to the pile.

Peter appeared suddenly behind Scott. "You know," he said, making Scott jump, "the Prof can hire landscaping people to do this kind of thing."

"If we can help out around here, we should," said Scott. "And don't scare the shit out of me like that."

"Guys?" Kurt interrupted. He held something small cupped in his hands, his pile of sticks discarded at his side.

Peter, Jean, and Scott gathered around him. In his hands, Kurt held a tiny, pink, quivering baby bird, its gaping beak peeping pitifully.

"Aww!" cooed Jean. "Poor little thing!"

"You're not supposed to touch a baby bird, dude," said Peter. "The mother bird won't take it back."

"That's only a myth," said Kurt. He looked up at the nearest tree and spotted a nest tucked into a low branch. A sparrow hopped along it, nervously chirping, keeping its eye on the crowd below.

"She is waiting for him, see?" he said, nodding towards it.

He 'ported to the branch next to the nest, which scared the sparrow away. Balancing expertly, he used his tail as leverage as he crouched over and deposited the helpless baby into its home.

He appeared on the ground again and watched expectantly. After a minute, the mother sparrow returned, settling on the nest and immediately feeding its little one.

"I told you," he said, smiling at his friends.

 _Kurt_ , the Professor's voice echoed telepathically in his head. He turned around to face the mansion, spotting the Professor looking out the window, his finger on his temple.

 _Could you come to my office, please?_

Kurt felt his heart sink a little. He was hoping he wouldn't have to deal with the danger room incident any more today, but he should have known better. It was just his luck; something crazy like this _would_ have to happen on his birthday.

"I'll see you guys later," he said to the team, then appeared in the Professor's office.

The Professor sat, still looking out the window. He seemed like his mind was far away. His brow was sharply furrowed, and he tapped on the armrest of his wheelchair steadily, like a ticking clock.

"All the children are safe, I presume?" he asked of Kurt.

"Oh... yes, they are all fine," he answered sheepishly. The Professor only nodded in reply, still gazing out the window. In the agonizing silence, Kurt coughed and started picking nervously at his tail.

"I'm really sorry about what happened today," he said, eyes on his feet. "I wasn't thinking clearly. I promise it won't happen again." He looked at the Professor, waiting for a nod, a dismissal, anything at all. He stayed silent, continuing to stare out the window.

Finally, he took a deep breath and drew the curtains closed. It took a moment for Kurt's eyes to adjust to the dim room.

He felt a lump form in his throat. "You're... you're not kicking me off the team, are you, Professor?" he stammered.

Charles gave the slightest chuckle, "No, no, it's nothing like that." His distant look returned, and he rubbed his lip thoughtfully.

Kurt didn't know whether to be relieved or even more frightened.

The Professor finally wheeled around and looked him in the eye for the first time since he'd been in the room. "Take a seat, my boy," he said gently, "there's something I've been meaning to tell you."


	9. Part 9 - The Plan

Magneto carried himself aloft in the sky, using his powers to control the magnetic fields around him and fly as fast as he could to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. He'd returned home from a long trip to the Gulf of Mexico not long ago to find several frantic messages on his answering machine from Mystique, begging him to come to the mansion. All he could glean from them was that there had been some kind of accident involving Kurt and Storm.

He didn't have the slightest idea why Charles hadn't contacted him telepathically about it. A terrible thought came to him... perhaps Charles was involved as well? He tried not to think of the chaos he might find awaiting him at the school, instead keeping himself calm and focused on the mission at hand, whatever it may be.

He landed quietly on the drive of the mansion, scaring a few children playing outside. He found the house quite intact, thank goodness. No one seemed in a panic, no alarms, no screaming. Confused, he used his power to swing open the doors. He marched inside and looked around at all of the startled teenagers.

Peter was among them, about halfway through eating a popsicle. He stared at Erik, dumbfounded, the popsicle hanging out of his mouth as he bent down, frozen in the act of tying his shoelaces.

Peter's presence barely registered to him. "Mystique?" he called out. She didn't answer.

He rounded the corner to see Charles's office door closed. It meant that it was occupied, and Charles was presumably inside.

He held out his hand and whipped the double doors wide open with a dramatic flourish. Kurt and the Professor both looked up in shock.

"I am _very_ tired of people barging in here as if they own the place," Charles grumbled.

"Well," said Erik as he walked into the room, "I did help you rebuild it."

Erik saw that Kurt was certainly not in immediate danger, apart from a bruise on his face and a cut on his lip. "What are you doing here?" he asked in their native German. "Are you hurt?"

Kurt looked down at his feet, mute. Erik noticed his navy blue skin looked paler than normal. His eyes looked hollow and worried... more worried than usual, at least.

"He's fine," said Charles. He held his finger to his temple, briefly scanning Erik's mind. "The crisis was averted quite a while ago, you can leave now."

"And Storm?" he asked, confused.

"As I said," replied the Professor, the patience in his voice wearing thin, "Everything is fine."

Erik nodded and slowly retreated. As he was about to exit the office, he turned back, facing Charles halfway.

"As long as I'm already here, Charles," he began hastily, "there was actually something I wanted to speak with you about."

"Erik..."

"It's all right, Professor," Kurt interjected. "I was about to leave, anyway." He stood and gave him a long look before speaking again. "Thank you for telling me... about everything..." he accidentally glanced at Erik, then back at the floor. He disappeared in a burst of smoke.

With a flick of his wrist, Magneto closed the doors and walked back to Charles's desk.

Charles leaned back in his wheelchair and sighed deeply. "Today has been exasperating. I would really rather have a bit of time to myself, if you don't mind."

"This won't take long at all," said Erik, sitting at a chair next to the desk. Feeling his chance to reveal his plan slipping through his fingers, he tried to keep his voice as cool as possible.

"I already know what you're going to say," said Charles. "And it's ridiculous."

Erik blinked. Of course he would have seen it while reading his mind. He knew he should have brought his helmet with him.

"It's not ridiculous, Charles," he said, a bit defensively. "It could work. I've been scouting the island for months, and-"

"You have to be kidding me," said the Professor, shaking his head. "You're planning on taking over an island in the Gulf of Mexico so that you can make your own country for mutants?"

Erik shifted a bit in his seat. Things were already not going well. "It's not exactly conventional, I'll have to admit," he explained, "but similar things have happened in history. And those instances went through years of bloodshed and war. There'd be no conquering involved. No killing. It's uninhabited, and in international waters. Really, how much different is it than what you do here, at your school?"

Charles laughed. "Quite a bit, because I haven't crowned myself king."

Erik felt anger rise in his throat, but he tamped it back down again. "That's not how it's going to work," he said, "there will be a democratically elected council, once it's inhabited, of course. We'll establish trade with other countries." He unconsciously held up his chin with a bit of smug pride. "I've already worked out a trade deal with the Mexican president."

Charles stared at him blankly, unimpressed. "You've gone completely barking mad, haven't you? How much did you have to threaten him? Who did you kill?"

He smirked. "My reputation precedes me. I barely had to lift a paperclip for him to take me seriously."

"And what is it you want from me, exactly?"

"Well... the island needs infrastructure, obviously. And as skilled as I am with architecture, I don't think I could plan out everything it needs by myself. I need engineers, agriculture specialists, all kinds of things, if I'm to do this correctly. That kind of help isn't cheap. Not to mention it will need currency anyway..."

"And you think I'm going to write you a check, don't you?" Charles rubbed his forehead. "I suppose I should be glad you're asking me, and not doing anything illegal, but the fact that you'd even think of such an absurd idea worries me."

Erik leaned forward earnestly in his chair, his politeness gone. "I have a once in a lifetime opportunity to do the same thing you're doing; making the world a better place for mutants to live. Think of it. A country built for mutant citizens, established peacefully through civil and diplomatic means, could set a shining example to the world that mutation is truly the next step in human evolution! And you could be part of it, Charles!"

"I'm trying to make the world a better place for mutants and humans to live _together_ ," he corrected him. "Financing a country built only for mutants would undermine that mission. Not to mention I don't think I have that kind of money to throw around. I'm not made of it, you know."

"Of course not. That's why you own an underground training facility, and a machine that can find any living person in the world, and a jet-"

"I get the point, Erik," huffed Charles. "I'm still not going to have anything to do with this project."

He leaned back and glared at him with cold, blue eyes. "You don't trust me, do you?"

Charles turned his wheelchair around to pick a stray paper off the floor. He said nothing.

"You don't think I can keep myself from using violence to get what I want. That's it, isn't it?" He stood up slowly. "You don't want your name associated with something of mine, something you think is bound to ruin your precious school's image."

Charles sat with the paper in his lap. "As you said," he turned around to face him again, "your reputation precedes you."

"After everything I've done for you..." he seethed.

"Shall I make a list?" Charles retorted. "Because I can make a longer one of the things you've ruined. Including my sister's life."

Erik paused. "I came here prepared to save her son."

"Did you know she was pregnant with him when you threw her out on the street?"

He unconsciously clenched his fist and all the metal in the room rumbled just slightly. "You must look at this through my perspective, friend _,_ " he whispered with venomous sarcasm. "Imagine the love of your life cheating on you, sleeping with another man right under your nose. What, precisely, would you have done?"

"I don't give a rat's arse about your perspective," he replied. "Answer my question."

After a long moment, Erik sat back down, relaxing his grip. "No. I didn't know she was pregnant."

Charles put a finger to his head again, telepathically checking to make sure he was telling the truth. Without removing his finger, he asked, "If you had known, would you have done it anyway?"

Erik gave him a sudden, disgusted glare. "That's none of your business," he muttered, then marched out of the Professor's office, magnetically flinging the doors open and slamming them shut.

Erik fumed inwardly, cursing himself for blowing his chance, and Charles for being an ungrateful, stingy prig. As he neared the front door, he heard a small whoosh from behind him. He turned to look. There was nothing there but the same teenagers as before, going about their business as usual.

"Hey, Mags," said Peter, suddenly standing between Erik and the door, an empty popsicle stick in his mouth. Erik jumped back and rolled his eyes. "Can I call you that?" he continued.

"No," he replied flatly, reaching for the door handle. Before he could open it, Peter zipped behind him, holding his head for support, and rushed them both faster than the speed of sound out of the doorway and into a field several miles away.

As Peter slowed down, a horse grazing nearby started and whinnied at their sudden appearance, then galloped away. Erik bent over and dry heaved a bit.

"Oops. Sorry about that," said Peter. "You didn't just eat, did you?"

"What's the meaning of this?" he asked through his tremendous headache and nausea. Being carried by Peter going full speed was like being crushed by a thousand pound rock for a second.

"Well," he said, chewing on the end of the popsicle stick, "I was kind of eavesdropping on your conversation with the Professor just now, and I was wondering... why couldn't you just, you know, rob Fort Knox or something?"

Erik stared at him for a moment, not comprehending his sentence, then stood up straight. "Because, Peter," he replied with a bit more dignity, "I'm trying to establish my dream without resorting to crime. I've done enough dragging my own name through the mud. Not to mention, Fort Knox, along with every other place worth guarding, has invested in those infernal new plexiglass guns presumably because of me."

"Bummer. I guess you'll just have to ask another millionaire, huh?"

Erik gave him an indignant look. He could tell by Peter's cheeky smirk that he had something up his sleeve.

Peter shrugged and pretended to think. "What if nobody's name had to get dragged through the mud? What if... some random guy were to suddenly come across a whole bunch of money and then give it to you as a gift?" He flipped his popsicle stick into the grass. "Hypothetically, of course."

"Then, I suppose it would be hypothetical money laundering," Erik said. "And it would get both parties in a huge amount of hypothetical trouble if he was caught."

Peter's smirk turned into a smile. "This guy has never been caught."

Erik turned around, mulling over the idea. He watched a flock of birds soar past overhead. "Why would you want to help me again? You've already broken me out of prison, and out of Apocalypse's clutches."

He glanced behind him. Peter picked at a tall blade of grass. His mischievous smile was gone, his white eyebrows furrowed in a thoughtful frown.

After a long pause, Peter spoke. "Because... I believe in what you're trying to do for mutantkind. I mean, who would turn down the chance to help start a new country, right? Sounds awesome."

Erik smiled. "It will be 'awesome' Peter, in the truest sense of the word." He turned around and held out his hand. "I will gladly accept your generous donation."

Peter looked up at him, slightly stunned, then shook his hand vigorously. "Cool! Great!" he said, a little breathless. "Ok, so I'm thinking the Federal Reserve branches in New Orleans, Houston, and Miami are the ones closest to the Gulf of Mexico. Don't ask me how I know that. And if I knew exactly where the island was, I could figure out the closest one to rob and then-"

Erik put up his hand. "I can give you the coordinates, Peter, but honestly, the less I know about your plans, the better. Just in case."

"Right," Peter nodded, "Just in case." He made a zipping motion across his mouth and threw away an imaginary key.

"Fantastic. Now... where on Earth are we?" Erik looked around him at the vast expanse of field on every side.

"Pound Ridge," said Peter, scratching the back of his head and squinting at the sunlight. "I think."

"You _think_?"

"It's fine," Peter said reassuringly, putting his hand behind Erik's head again, "We'll just go back the way we came."

"No, Peter, I-" before he could finish his sentence, they were back outside the mansion once again. He felt something sour rise in his throat. He let out a ragged breath and forced himself to swallow it back down.

"I was about to say," Erik explained, leaning on a tree, "I could figure out my way home. But thank you... I suppose."

"No problem," said Peter, scooting closer to him. "So... what about those coordinates?"

* * *

Peter walked slowly through the lawn, feeling the dew spray against his ankles as he disturbed the grass, listening to the sound of children playing a game of soccer nearby. It was a feeling he wasn't used to. The world was like molasses, like it was stopping him from moving forward, but he knew it wasn't the world's fault. It was his.

Right now, looking at the numbers scribbled on a piece of paper in his hand, he should have been planning his grand heist, but all he could think about was what he hadn't said to Erik.

He willed himself to speed up and time slowed down around him. His world went silent and still. He bent down, scooped up a cricket jumping in midair, then played with its outstretched legs like a tiny action figure.

It would have been so easy to tell him. Just a few words would have done it. _Erik, you're my dad. I'm your son._ Or even, _Hey, do you remember that woman named Isabelle from a few decades ago? Yeah, you knocked her up. Surprise!_

Sadness quickly dissolved his sarcastic thoughts. He knew in his heart he couldn't have admitted it. He was a self-professed loser. An idiot. A mooching bum who had only just moved out of his mom's basement at the age of almost 30. Why would one of the most important, influential mutants in history want someone like him as a son?

He wouldn't, and Peter knew it.

He had to prove to Erik that he was worthy of the position. He'd help him found his new country, and then maybe he'd be proud enough to welcome him into his life with open arms.

His resolve strengthened, he dropped the cricket and almost ran somewhere out of the Professor's telepathic reach to complete his plans when a thought stopped him.

He couldn't do it tonight. He'd promised Nightcrawler a birthday party weeks ago.

He let his powers dissipate, the world returning to normal around him. The shouts of the soccer game resumed, the little cricket jumped away. He walked regular-speed up the steps of the mansion. If he had to put his grand scheme on hold, it would be to strategize the most amazing party any of the X-Men had ever seen.


	10. Part 10 - The Party

_A/N: Warning for bad language, alcohol use, and hilariously inappropriate grabbing. Also, see how many easter eggs you can find!_

* * *

That night in downtown New York, next to a girly bar advertising "Exotic Dancers" in flashing neon lights, 5 figures seemed to materialize out of thin air. Stray newspapers followed in the wind behind them. Peter had carried his teammates all the way from Salem Center to Manhattan, giving them plenty of long rest stops during the 50 mile journey. Even then, it was an hour faster than driving. He took his arms from around his friends' shoulders and let them get their bearings. Jean, Scott, Kurt, and Ororo were dressed to kill, and Peter would make sure they'd have the time of their lives.

Nightcrawler looked around him at the trashy street littered with trashy people. Some scantily dressed ladies on the corner stared at him, mildly intrigued. One man slumped against a wall, muttering to himself, holding a bottle in a paper bag. He drank from it before coughing his lungs out.

"This is New York City?" Ororo asked, saying exactly what Kurt was thinking. "I thought it would be cleaner. And where is the Empire State Building?"

"It's around," Peter replied, patting her on the back. "But that's not why we're here."

"Would you mind explaining that part?" said Scott. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around, on alert. "New York isn't a place you want to be at night."

"Pfft, only if you're a normie."

Jean cringed. "You can't say that."

"Why?"

"Because, if humans can't say 'mutie,' then you can't say 'normie.' It's like, an unspoken rule."

Peter rolled his eyes. "God, Jean, you're so sensitive." She glowered at him as he turned his attention back to Scott. "Dude, we have mutant powers. I can't believe you're worried about humans mugging us."

"We are going to get mugged?" Kurt shrieked. The hookers on the street corner laughed at him, making him blush an even darker shade of blue. He popped his collar so that it covered everything but his gleaming yellow eyes.

"Nobody's getting mugged." Peter reassured him. He zipped away for a moment, then came back with a rolled up poster he'd ripped off a wall. "We're here for this."

He unrolled it and his friends' eyes lit up with excitement. On the poster was Dazzler, the mutant pop superstar, in her signature blue eye makeup, pointing to the sky with a ball of light glowing from her fingertips. The jagged, multicolored words read:

 _Dazzler_

 _Sounds of Light and Fury tour_

 _Madison Square Garden, New York_

 _August 18_ _th_ _1984, Midnight_

"You got Dazzler tickets?" asked an ecstatic Scott, completely forgetting his earlier apprehension. "They've been sold out for months! And they were $50 each!"

"Yeah, how _did_ you score tickets, Peter?" said Jean, crossing her arms over her chest.

He shrugged. "If by 'score tickets' you mean, 'I can sneak anyone into anywhere,' then yeah, I guess I scored some tickets."

She raised an eyebrow, which he ignored completely.

"But first, since it's only..." he checked his digital watch, "9 o' clock, I suggest we start the night off with a good old-fashioned club crawl."

"Must we crawl to them?" asked Ororo, confused. "Why can't we walk?"

Peter took a deep sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. "No, Ororo, it's just a figure of speech." He was starting to wonder if he was going to have to literally teach them how to have fun.

She pulled her leather coat on a bit tighter. "I have never been to a club before."

"Really?" asked Peter and Scott, in unison.

"They do not have many in Cairo," she explained, "only in the nice neighborhoods. I have heard that Egyptian beer tastes like dog piss."

"So, have you never had a drink before, either, in your entire life?" asked Peter, a suspicious tone in his voice.

She shook her head. Apparently, he _was_ going to have to teach Storm, at least.

"I've never had an _American_ drink in my entire life," Kurt piped up with a grin. Storm rolled her eyes, unimpressed.

Peter slung an arm around his shoulder. "That's gonna change tonight, birthday boy," he said, guiding him down the street. The rest of the team followed close behind.

" _Das gibt's nicht!_ " said Kurt as they walked. "I can't believe it! A concert in New York City!" He smiled wide, then hissed with pain and covered his mouth with his hand. The cut from the accident had swollen a bit, and was even more tender than before.

"How'd you get that thing on your lip, dude?" said Peter.

He glanced behind him at Ororo, loath to tell his wisecracking friend who had punched him.

"I just... you know... hit my face on something during training, I guess."

They walked through Manhattan until they reached a club called the Roxy, the chunky letters of its sign shining in bright white neon against the drab brick wall. The inside thumped with music that bled into the streets each time the bouncers opened the doors. There was a line down the block, completely obscuring the sidewalk. Crowds of people waited impatiently outside to either be rejected by, or let into, one of the most exclusive clubs in New York City.

Peter held his friends close and easily sped past the hulking bouncers. He stole a hand stamp from the front and stamped each of them.

"Ta-da!" He threw his arms wide. Laser lights flashed in the darkness around them to illuminate hundreds of people sweating and dancing to the deafening music under a disco ball. The people at the bar looked like the cream of the crop of New York; posh, beautiful, wearing the latest fashions, ordering the most expensive and trendy drinks.

Ororo grabbed Jean's arm without hesitation. "Let's dance!" she exclaimed, an uncharacteristically huge grin on her face. Jean gave a helpless shrug to Scott as Ororo dragged her off to the dance floor.

"I've got to piss, anyway," Scott muttered to himself, and began looking for a bathroom.

"Meet you at the bar, Scott!" shouted Peter, leading an overwhelmed Kurt in that direction.

Peter squeezed them in between a couple of patrons and flagged down the barkeeper. "A rum and Coke and a Yuengling, please," he said, pointing to himself and Kurt.

The bartender scowled at them and shook his head. He pointed at Kurt accusingly. "No way, weirdo. We don't serve people like you."

Peter was too shocked to even speak. He stared at the bartender as he turned around and started making a drink for someone else.

He could practically see Kurt's spirit break. Kurt looked down at the floor as he said, "It's all right. Let's just go to another bar."

"No, dude, don't worry, we'll-" but before he could finish his sentence, Kurt teleported away.

Finally, Peter's shock was overwhelmed by rage. "You... you fucking asshole! You bigoted, racist shithead!" he exploded, making the people on either side of him back away. "What kind of garbage doesn't serve mutants? We live in the United States of America, god damn it!"

The barkeep turned around again, leaning over the bar and getting an inch away from his face. "I can serve whoever I want. You'd better leave now before I call security."

"Mark, what's your problem?" said a woman's voice, above the din of the crowd. Peter looked behind him and couldn't believe his eyes. It couldn't possibly be who he thought it was.

It was her. Dazzler. In the flesh.

She was recognizable, even without her blue makeup and skintight suit. In fact, she looked shabby compared to the other clientele, in a regular tee shirt and jeans. A large man stood next to her, her own personal bodyguard, he guessed. She glared at the barkeeper, who slowly backed away from Peter.

"Did I just hear you say you don't serve people like them?" she asked.

"What? That's not what I said! I mean, that's not what I meant, Alison... Ms. Blaire," he stammered, holding up his hands like she was pointing a gun at him.

"Good. Then get him whatever he wants." She produced a $100 bill from her pocket and laid it on the bar. "This is for my tab, and his drinks. Keep the change."

Mark nodded, casting a last, distasteful glance at Peter before making a rum and Coke.

Peter snapped his fingers at Mark, with a cocky smirk. "Oh yeah, I forgot. I'm gonna need... let's see... two whiskey sours for the girls, and an old fashioned, too. And don't forget the beer."

He rolled his eyes, but put a bottle of Yuengling out on the bar.

Alison leaned in closer to Peter. "I am so sorry," she said, her long, blonde, wavy hair nearly touching his face. "They always serve me here, I don't know why he was so rude to you."

Peter laughed, trying not to let his voice crack with embarrassment. "That's because you're... well... you know... famous. Really famous."

She smiled at him, and he got a look into her wide, blue eyes before her bodyguard tapped her on the shoulder. "Ms. Blaire," he said expectantly, motioning towards the door.

"Oh, I have to go," she said. "I shouldn't even be here, I'm already super late for sound check. Really nice to meet you..."

"Peter," he said, with a dumbfounded look on his face.

"Peter," she repeated, then walked away with a little wave of her hand. Her bodyguard followed closely behind her.

He chuckled stupidly to himself. _I just got three inches away from Dazzler,_ he thought _. She almost touched me._

His smile vanished immediately, and he smacked himself in the head. He'd just talked to Dazzler, and he had nothing to show for it. The team would never, ever believe he just saw her in person. Forgetting all about his drinks, he zipped away after her.

She screamed a little and backed into her bodyguard when he appeared suddenly before her.

"Hey, Dazzler, Alison, hi," he spoke as fast as a hummingbird on cocaine. "I can call you that, right?" He didn't wait for an answer. "It's Peter, from 5 seconds ago. I know you've got a show tonight but my friends would really love to meet you, I mean they would freak the hell out, I swear it will literally take like 20 seconds of-"

"Move!" yelled the bodyguard, and reached for him with an arm built like an ape. Peter dodged him easily, leaving him clutching for thin air. He reappeared right next to Alison.

"-20 seconds of your time," he continued. He grabbed her arm and put his hand behind her head.

"Get off!" she yelled. She tried to pull away from him, but Peter kept a firm grip on her as she squirmed.

"No, don't worry, I'm not going to hurt-"

From Dazzler's hand came a blinding flare of pure, white light, ten times as powerful as a strong camera flash, and pointed directly into his eyeballs.

He yelped as his world turned blank. He felt her and her bodyguard brush past her as he rubbed his eyes, trying in vain to regain his sight. He groaned in pain and blinked.

"Alison!" He groped blindly in the air around him. "Wait!" He grabbed something soft and squishy in front of him, which was followed swiftly by a woman's ear piercing scream and a blow to the head, knocking him out cold.

* * *

Kurt crouched outside, leaning on the club wall, sweating in the humid night air. He watched the bouncers as they carefully hand selected the guests, telling most of the hopeful clubgoers to beat it.

 _Maybe it was just this club,_ he rationalized. _They all seem like assholes. Nobody was ever mean to me at the mall._ He knew he should be attempting to enjoy himself, despite the racist bartender, but his thoughts began stray to a bad place, a place he rarely allowed them to go.

 _The bartender was talking to me, not Peter. What if they would all have a better time if I weren't here? What if I am the problem? My own mother never wanted me in her life, maybe-_

He forced himself to stop. He couldn't let those kinds of terrible thoughts send him down into a spiral of self-loathing. Instead, he took a long, deep breath, and reached for the rosary beads he always kept in his pocket. He felt for the cross, closed his eyes and softly began to recite the Apostle's Creed in German.

His prayer was interrupted when the back doors flung open. The rest of the X-Men filed out, Ororo and Scott with Peter's arms slung over their shoulders. Peter looked as if he could barely stand.

Kurt teleported over to them. Peter had a bruise and a welt quickly growing on the side of his head. "What happened? Did you get in a fight?" he asked.

"No," Scott answered for him, clearly irritated. He let go of him and let him lean against Ororo. "He grabbed some chick's boob, and she clocked him, and when we went to help him we all got thrown out."

"'S not what happened," Peter slurred. "You guys, I saw Dazzler, I swear to god. She bought me drinks and I was going to introduce you to her but- oww..." He held his head with one hand.

Storm's eyes clouded over. She made a tiny cloud in front of her, which produced miniscule balls of hail, and she held out her hand to catch them. She gave a handful to Peter, which he pressed to the side of his head.

"Thanks."

She took another handful and cautiously gave it to Kurt.

"For your lip," she said softly. Surprised, he took the ice and pressed it to his mouth.

"Jean, tell them that I'm telling the truth," Peter pleaded.

Jean and Peter stared at each other for a long moment before Jean finally said, "Yeah. He met Dazzler."

"Thank you!" he said, throwing up his free hand.

She continued, "he also grabbed her like a total creep, which scared the hell out of her, so she used her powers on him, and _then_ he accidentally grabbed someone's boob."

"You weren't supposed to tell them that part," Peter muttered.

"Warn me next time, and make sure I know which part of the truth you want me to tell, then," she said sarcastically.

"Shit," said Scott, rubbing his forehead. "We're gonna have to go home already and none of us have even had a drink yet."

"No, hold on," said Peter, standing up straight and putting up a finger. "We're not done with this night yet."

"Peter, you might have a concussion!" said Jean. "And you're our ride!"

"I'm totally fine! We are not letting this get in the way of Kurt's birthday party," he said, putting an arm around Kurt, much to his chagrin. "And we are not going home until he says so, because this is his night, and he calls the shots, right dude?" He gave Kurt a desperate smirk and patted his shoulder.

Kurt opened his mouth, and closed it again. He looked at the concerned faces of Scott and Jean, silently begging him to end the night early. On the other hand, he knew how excited Peter was for this concert, and how much Kurt wanted something good to happen for himself tonight. If Peter said he was okay, then...

"Let's go to the next bar!" he said, with as much enthusiasm as he could.

"All right!" said Peter, holding up his hand to give Kurt a high five. Mortified, he slapped it weakly. Jean and Scott groaned, Ororo giving Peter and Kurt a confused stare.

Peter gathered his friends once again. "You heard the man, let's go have fun!" he said, then sped off into the night with them.

* * *

They stopped in front of a much smaller venue, simply named "Stan's Bar and Grill." Its sign wasn't lit, no line formed down the street, no bouncers greeted them at the door. Inside, a few dozen people shouted at the Yankee's game playing on the TV in the corner, the air thick with cigarette smoke. A dusty, multicolored jukebox played Rolling Stones through the hubbub. A wrinkled old man with coke-bottle glasses tended the bar. His dour expression barely changed as Peter slid up to him.

"You got quite a lump there, kid," he barked. He let out a dry, wheezing cough that Peter thought might have been a laugh. "Whad'ya do, piss off a rhinoceros?"

"It's a long story," he muttered. He leaned over so the ancient bartender could hear him better. He motioned to his team. "We've all had a really shitty night so far, so if you've got a problem with mutants, just tell me now and we'll go. I'm not looking for trouble."

"Pfft," The bartender waved his hand dismissively. "I've owned this bar for 40 years. I've seen stranger things. As long as your money's green, kid, I don't care if your friends are blue or zebra striped or whatever."

"Thanks." He slapped down $5 and brought 5 beers back to the table.

"A toast!" Peter proclaimed, as the X-Men lifted their glasses, "To Kurt!"

"To Jean, too!" Kurt said, "For getting into college."

"Don't make it about me," said Jean, embarrassed, as they clinked glasses. "It's your night."

"Don't be so modest," said Scott. He scooted closer to his girlfriend, put an arm around her waist, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

 _Kurt,_ Jean's telepathic voice called out to him in his head, startling him. He saw her lift her finger to her temple. No one else seemed to notice as they drank to their toast. _Are you sure you want to keep going tonight? After what the Professor told you, and the danger room thing?_

 _Don't get into my head, Jean!_ thought Kurt, a bit more forcefully than he meant to.

 _Sorry,_ she replied. _I can't help it sometimes. I just don't want this night to turn into a disaster for you._

 _Today was already a disaster,_ he thought back at her. _I want to have fun tonight. I need to. Please don't tell anyone what's going on. I can deal with it tomorrow_.

 _If you say so_ , she thought, then dropped her hand to put her arm around Scott's waist.

Kurt took a sip from his glass, then made a disgusted face at his beer. "Are you sure this is American, not Egyptian?" he asked Peter. "It tastes like _pisswasser._ "

Ororo took a long swig, draining half her glass.

"Whoa, slow down there!" said Peter. "You have like, no alcohol tolerance. That's gonna catch up to you later."

"It is... not so bad," she said, suppressing a belch. She took another drink just to spite him.

Not to be outdrank by a girl who'd never had beer in her life, Kurt reluctantly took another sip. He hoped it would taste less disgusting the more he drank, like how most alcohol was supposed to.


	11. Part 11 - Drunk

The night continued on without any more incidents, and everyone finally began having fun after the first drink or two. They walked from club to club, Peter and Scott getting into friendly, useless, progressively more drunken arguments along the way, like what the real lyrics to "Blinded by the Light" were, and which fictional superheroes would win in a fight, and which one of them could piss farther. By the time they stumbled upon a club dubiously named "The Rabbit Hole," everyone's sense of inhibition was rapidly disappearing.

Ororo and Jean finished off an enormous rainbow-colored margarita between them, sipping out of two straws, while Scott and Peter still somehow had the energy to argue between themselves.

"I still hate that they made Luke and Leia twins, man," said Scott, slurring a bit as he sipped his seventh beer, though no one was counting anymore.

"Why? They could be twins, you don't know," Peter said.

"Carrie Fisher is like, 20 years older than Luke Hamill!" said Scott.

"Mark Hamill," Jean corrected him, rubbing her forehead.

"Yeah, I said that," Scott replied. "There's no way I'm gonna believe they're twins. They look nothing alike. They're not even the same height!"

"There are twins that are older than each other," said Peter, with a hiccup. "I mean, taller. And they don't have to look alike, maybe they're fraternal."

"How would you know? Are you like, a twin expert?"

Ororo groaned loudly. "Why do you two argue about such stupid things? No one cares! It is only a movie!"

"It's a guy thing, Uhura, you wouldn't understand," said Peter, too drunk to realize he couldn't pronounce Storm's real name.

Before Ororo could protest, Scott suddenly spoke up. "Where's Kurt?"

Everyone looked around them at the dark, noisy club. Kurt was nowhere to be seen. He'd been quiet all night, but now no one could remember where they saw him last.

"Can you find him, Jean?" Scott asked.

"I can't use my tel... tepal..." She sighed. "I can't read minds when I'm drunk."

"Okay, okay, nobody panic," said Scott, trying to gather his thoughts and focus through his intoxication. "We'll split up to look for him, and meet back here in-"

Just then, Kurt 'ported in front of them in a puff of smoke. "Hey guys!" he grinned, his white, razor sharp teeth shining against the darkness.

"Where've you been?" Peter asked. "We were about to send out a search party."

"Oh, I was talking to this nice woman at the bar," he merrily explained. "She's very beautiful. Her name is Amanda, but she says everyone calls her Mandy." The other boys' faces slowly lit up as he continued. "She bought me some drinks, and she thinks I'm funny, so she gave me this." He held up a napkin with a phone number scribbled on it.

Scott and Peter exploded with excitement as the girls gave each other a sly smile.

"Dude! Congratulations!" yelled Scott.

Peter grabbed Kurt by the shoulders. "Do you understand what this means?"

"She... wants to talk to me more?"

"It means you're gonna score!"

Kurt's face remained blank.

"Get laid? Roll in the hay? Kurt, _she wants to have sex with you!_ "

Kurt's eyes grew huge. His grin disappeared only for a moment as the wheels in his brain churned into overdrive. It returned even wider than before.

Ororo and Jean couldn't keep it in anymore. They began to giggle uncontrollably.

Ororo slid out of her seat, "I will start a search party for another margarita," she told Jean.

"I can't have any more, get a small one." Jean stopped laughing, and held her head in both hands with a moan.

"You all right?" Scott asked, hugging her by the shoulder. "You need some water?"

She nodded. "I've got to go to the bathroom," she muttered, scooting past him.

"Need me to hold your hair back?" he said, as she stumbled towards the ladies room. She didn't answer.

Peter smirked at him as he sipped his beer.

"What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing,"

"No, what is it?"

Peter made a whipping motion with his hand.

"I'm not whipped," said Scott, brows furrowed behind his glasses. "I just want to be nice to my girlfriend."

"Let me ask you something," said Peter, leaning back in his seat. "When she says, 'I'm hot,' do you immediately get up and turn down the air conditioning?"

"Yeah, but-"

"And when you go out to eat, she always decides where to go, doesn't she?"

Scott didn't reply. He only stared in disbelief as Peter shook his head.

"Whipped."

"You just hate Jean," said Scott. "You've always hated Jean."

"Hate is a strong word. We... have our differences."

"Why?"

"Because," said Peter, shifting in his seat, "I dunno, she's nosy. And kind of a goody two shoes, you have to admit..."

"You're wrong, man," said Scott, anger growing in his voice. "You don't know her at all."

"Whatever, dude. It's not important." Peter tapped the end of his beer bottle on the table, waiting out the uncomfortable silence until he could think of something funny to say to diffuse the situation.

Kurt stared at both of them, nervously fidgeting with his tail. "I think Jean is nice," he said, attempting to be helpful. They both stared daggers at him until he decided to teleport somewhere else for a few minutes.

Scott finally broke the silence. "You wouldn't know how to treat a girl, anyway. I'm sure they were all really impressed by your mom's basement and your Twinkie collection."

"Yeah, well all I know is that dating Jean turned you into a complete tool."

"Why, because I'm not an asshole, like you?" Scott's face was beginning to turn red.

"She puppets you around, and you can't even see the strings right in front of you," Peter scoffed, letting it all come out, whether he wanted it to or not. "You want my honest opinion? You'll be better off once she's gone, bro."

He watched Scott's hands ball up into fists. Knowing he'd stuck his foot a little too far in his mouth this time, he decided to make an evasive maneuver.

He drained his beer. "I've got to piss," he said, then sped off to the bathroom.

He didn't realize how much he actually did have to pee until he stood up. Still using his superpowers, he paused a moment at the men's restroom door, wondering if he shouldn't corner himself in a small space, just in case Scott felt like following him. He decided instead to piss in the alley somewhere. He needed a little time to figure out what to say, anyway. He couldn't pee any faster than a human; the laws of physics couldn't make liquid come out of him any quicker than it could from anyone else.

As he was plotting how to weasel out of his own mess, he barely registered a large, shady, masculine figure in the act of sneaking into the women's restroom.

* * *

Jean sat on a groaty toilet, trying to rub the blurriness out of her eyes. Every muffled beat of the bass pumping through the bathroom wall made her head hurt. It was like someone giving her skull a light whack with a mallet, and the smell of stale vomit and perfume in the bathroom didn't help. She thought it would be nice, for a change, to not hear everyone's thoughts echoing through her mind constantly, but being drunk only made her feel disconnected, as if she'd lost the use of one of her senses. She had no idea how the Professor spent 10 years without his powers, and drunk the entire time, to boot.

She pulled herself together, left her stall, and sipped some water from the sink out of her cupped hand. She caught a flicker of movement from the corner of her eye, swift and threatening, but before she could react, someone grabbed her shoulder and thrust her against a wall. Her head hit the tile, sending excruciating pain through the back of her neck.

A large stranger, face dark and blurry through Jean's intoxication, sneered at her. He held his huge arm against her chest and neck.

"Don't scream, if you know what's good for you," he whispered at her, breath pungent with alcohol.

She instinctively thrust her free elbow towards his face, but he backed away and it only grazed his nose. She lost her balance and tumbled to the floor. He took the opportunity to pin himself on top of her, crushing the breath out of her and any chance of a scream. The man wasted no time in ripping off her skirt and panties.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Focusing her energy, she tried to reach wherever her power was hiding and bring it to the surface to defend herself. A terror unlike anything she'd ever known engulfed her soul, as if she were dying. It pumped through her grinding headache, blinding her, deafening her, trying to shield her from what was about to happen.

 _She saw her own face somehow, eyes wide, mouth open in a voiceless scream, red hair flowing onto the bathroom floor. She no longer felt the strange man's disgusting breath on the back of her neck, even though he was still there._

 _Jean, the Jean that was watching her own body about to be violated, was calm and sober. She knew what to do. The universe had already decided their fates. She knew she could easily make the man disappear. She could disassemble his molecules, turning him instantly to dust, but justice wouldn't come with a quick death. No. He needed to be in pain, the kind of pain he could understand. She felt Scott's mental energy seething with rage._

 _SCOTT, she called out to her love. She melded with his anger, becoming him for a moment, with a power made of fire and stars. In the bar, he jumped out of his seat, spilling beer all over the floor. COME, she commanded, and he ran._

Jean returned to her body, shaking with fear, still trying to scream. She heard the man panting like an animal, heard the tinkle of his belt buckle coming loose.

The door slammed open. Scott gave the man a laser blast from his eyeballs, sending him toppling off his girlfriend with his pants halfway down and a large burn down his side. Jean scrambled to her feet, unsure if what she'd just seen or thought was even real.

"Get out of here!" he yelled to her. She rushed out of the bathroom, through the bar, and into the alley, holding up her skirt with one hand.

Peter had just zipped up his fly when he saw her run out the door, disheveled and sobbing. Before they could say a word to each other, screams rang out from inside the bar, followed by the sound of shattering glass and breaking furniture.

Peter ran to the center of the dance floor, where a terrified mob had gathered, screaming and shouting at something happening in front of them. He pushed through to find Scott, face distorted in fury, kneeling over the moaning body of a badly burned man who was bleeding from every orifice in his head. Scott's fist came down on his face over and over. Each blow sent a spray of blood and saliva, and sometimes a tooth, onto the dance floor. Peter watched in terror as the man finally went limp.

The mob watched with him. No one dared bring him off of the unconscious lummox. They all stared at Scott as he slowly stood up. His knuckles dripped with blood, the man's and his own, as well. He whipped off his glasses.

Peter had only half an instant to react. He knew if he didn't move, Scott would open his eyes and unleash his full power on the man, leaving nothing but a crater where his head used to be. There was no time to talk him down.

Using his superspeed, he scooped up Scott, Jean, and the rest of the team, running them all as far away as he could manage within a split second.

Scott opened his eyes, screaming with rage, sending out a red blast of laser energy. Instead of smashing into the dance floor, it hit the Hudson River, making a spray of water explode over them all like the world's most harmless bomb.

Scott put his glasses back on and looked around, confused. He and his teammates were gathered in some kind of park. The glittering lights of Manhattan before them were surrounded by a dark oblivion of water.

"Where are we?" asked Jean, wet hair falling into her face. Kurt looked behind him and began to wander away, while Ororo stumbled over to the shore and vomited into the river.

"New Jersey," answered Peter, panting, with his hands on his knees. The alcohol was finally crashing down on him. He'd used up the last of his energy to drag them all to safety.

"Get me back there, Peter!" screamed Scott.

"You almost killed a dude!" his voice cracked as he sat on the grass and covered his face with his hands.

"He tried to rape her!"

"If I could piss faster, I would have stopped him, but-"

Scott's voice went cold. "What do you mean?"

Peter removed his hands as the full realization of what he'd just said slapped him in the face. He could have stopped Jean's attacker before he'd snuck into the bathroom. He didn't. He was too worried about pissing his pants and Scott being angry at him to prevent her from almost being raped.

Peter panicked as Scott walked towards him. He stood up, nearly falling over himself, putting his hands in front of him defensively. "How was I supposed to know what was going to happen?"

Scott began to pace like a caged animal, his jaw clenched in rage.

"You saw him. You saw him go into the bathroom. YOU SAW HIM."

Peter glanced at Jean and Ororo. Ororo looked sick while Jean stood frozen, staring between him and Scott, all emotion washed from her face.

"I didn't... bro, come on..."

Suddenly, Scott ran towards him. With both hands, he grabbed Peter by his collar and slammed him into a tree.

Ororo clumsily ran in the direction Kurt had gone.

"Don't ever call me 'bro' again," Scott growled. "You're the reason my brother is dead. Did he die because you had to piss? Did you just not feel like putting out the effort? Did you let Jean get hurt just to have the last laugh? Huh?"

Peter could see the fire of his laser eyes shining behind his glasses. Only a thin layer of ruby quartz and a flick of Scott's hand separated him from death. He couldn't tell which one of them was shaking more. Tears began to stream down Scott's cheek.

Jean walked over and put her hand on Scott's shoulder. He shrugged her off, but backed away from Peter just slightly, letting go of his jacket.

"I... I'm sorry..." Peter stuttered.

"Shut up," said Scott through his tears. "Just shut the fuck up. If I never hear another word out of your obnoxious mouth, it'll be too soon." He turned away and walked towards the shore, Jean following behind him.

Peter slid down the tree until he sat on the ground, as Scott sat down on a bench, out of earshot from Peter. Jean sat next to him, holding him close to her.

"You saved my life, Scott," she whispered to him. She wished so badly that she had her telepathic power to soothe him with. She had no idea how it had come back to her before, or if she had only imagined it. Scott didn't answer her, but eventually he buried his head in the soft curve of her neck.

"We need to go home," she said. "Let's find Kurt and Storm."

* * *

At a dive bar a few blocks away, Kurt sat with his head down on the bar in his crossed arms. He was so dizzy, he was amazed he'd even teleported this far. He couldn't deal with his teammates right now, screaming at each other for no reason. He could barely deal with himself.

The real situation had flown right over his head. He had no idea what had happened to Jean or what Scott had done. He assumed it was Peter he'd been fighting with in The Rabbit Hole. It was too dark outside, and he too drunk, to notice the blood on Scott's hands. The alcohol was starting to overwhelm him with self-pity and nausea. Why did everyone have to screw up his birthday?

 _At least I still have Amanda's phone number_ , he thought to himself. He reached in his right pocket, then his left, then both back pockets, before he realized with horror that he'd lost it. He groaned loudly and pulled at his hair. This night could not get worse.

He heard the door open behind him and felt a hand grip his shoulder. "Kurt!" said Ororo, her voice full of fear, "Scott and Peter are fighting!"

"Of course, what else is new?" he muttered, sipping someone else's left over beer on the counter. He should have known it would _always_ get worse.

"They are going to hurt each other! You have to help!"

"Why don't you just beat them up, then?" He stumbled out of his chair, keeping himself standing by leaning on the bar. He forced down the bile trying to come up his throat. "You are good at that, _ja_?" he sneered.

Her eyes clouded for a moment, then went back to their normal brown color. "What is wrong with you?" Ororo shouted. "The X-Men need us and you decide to sit here feeling sorry for yourself?"

"I don't want to be an X-Man anymore!" he shouted back, surprising himself as much as her. "Why would I want to be on a team where we all just try to kill each other when one of us makes a mistake? It's like we are not even friends! Why would I..." He paused. Tears came involuntarily to his eyes, and he forced those back down, too. "Why would I want to be on a team whose leader is a liar?"

"Mystique?" she asked, glaring at him. "She is not a liar! Why would you say that?"

"She is a liar, and a coward, and you are an idiot for idolizing her!"

Storm's eyes once again grew white and rain began to fall outside. He knew he was pushing her buttons. He knew he was being cruel. He didn't care. There was power in his hateful words that he'd never used in his life.

Just then, the other X-Men walked into the bar, soaking wet. Kurt and Ororo barely noticed as they stared each other down.

"Go ahead, Storm!" he yelled, throwing up his hands and nearly tumbling over. "Strike me dead! Apocalypse would have been proud!"

The scowl slowly melted from her face, replaced by confusion and hurt. Her eyes remained white as she sat down on a chair and turned away from him.

Kurt's own words shocked him as they sunk in, forcing the anger out of him. He took no sense of _shadenfreude_ from seeing her cry. He shook his head as his team stared at him.

"Ororo, I am so sorry." He went to her and sat down on the chair next to her. She refused to meet his eye. "I did not mean what I said. I did not mean any of those things."

"Then why did you say them?" she asked, wiping her runny nose.

He looked up at his teammates, his friends, staring at him, expecting an answer for his outburst. There was no running away, now. Jean looked at her feet, already knowing the next words he would say.

"Mystique is my mother."

The words didn't sound true, coming out of his mouth. His mother was in Germany. She made pancakes every morning for breakfast. She came to his rehearsals. She took care of him when he was sick, held him when he was little and afraid of noises in the dark. Raven had done none of those things.

Ororo stopped crying as Kurt bit his lip. "She could not even tell me herself," he continued. "The Professor did." He felt sick again and the tears flowed down the scars on his face. "I did not even know I was adopted."

Peter and Scott sat down at the table. "Jesus, Kurt..." said Scott, shaking his head.

They sat for a few minutes, stunned, in relative silence as Kurt continued to cry. Ororo put her arms around him in a wordless hug.

Jean leaned on a column, then finally adjusted her skirt, zipping it back up all the way. "Does anyone have a dime?" she asked. Peter gave her one, and she went to the payphone outside. She dialed the school's number.

"Hank, it's Jean... I know... I know it's 1 in the morning... we need a ride... please?"

* * *

The hung over, exhausted, feeble excuses for X-Men sat on the sidewalk outside of the tiny Weehawken dive bar, waiting for Hank to pick them up. It had been over an hour since Jean called the school. Every time a low flying plane zoomed by overhead, they all looked up expectantly, but none of them were the Blackbird.

A particularly low jet caught all of their attention, so much so that they all stood up, waiting for the plane to land. A car honk startled them into reality. It was Hank, driving the ugliest wood paneled, puke colored station wagon any of them had ever seen.

He honked again, rolling down the window. "Get in!" he yelled at them.

They all squeezed into the car. Scott was in the front seat, while Jean, Kurt, and Ororo barely fit into the back. Peter was forced to strap himself into the backwards facing seat behind them. Hank had taken his medicine, but it didn't help the dark circles under his eyes.

"So... why aren't we in the Blackbird right now?" asked Peter.

Hank put his elbow on the window and leaned his head in his hand. "Do you know how much jet fuel costs, Peter?" he groaned, rubbing his forehead.

He let the subject drop as Hank put the car in gear.

The city's streetlights gradually gave way to dark, winding, country roads. Jean and Scott stared out the window in silence. He put his hand behind his seat, and Jean meshed her fingers with his. Ororo's sleeping head gradually made its way to Kurt's shoulder. He didn't try to disturb her, enjoying a tiny bit of comfort, even if it was unintentional on her part.

"Guys?" said Peter, waking Ororo up. She left a little bit of drool on Kurt's jacket. "Can we agree to never get drunk together again?"

No one answered him, instead going back to staring out the windows.

It was 3:30 by the time they got back to the mansion. The moon had set hours before, leaving nothing but the stars to light their way. Everyone stumbled, exhausted, into the house and their respective bedrooms.

Everyone except Peter.

Now was as good a time as any to do something right, for a change, especially while the Professor was still asleep and clueless. Gaining a second wind, he found the coordinates Magneto had given him, left a note on his door, and ran into the morning.


End file.
